Synaptic Chatter

The central nervous system communicates via nerve cells called neurons. The brain is made of about 100 billion neurons, which are organized into various dynamic circuits. Each neuron is a link in these circuits. Neurons are directional. On one side of the cell's body are dendrites, which recieve impulses from other neurons. On the other side is an axon, which sends impulses out to other neurons via its axon terminals (or as I call them, tendrils). When one of these fine threads connects with the dendrite of a neighboring neuron, it can send various chemical messages to it- not directly, but across a gap called a synapse; rather like a spark plug.

Stimulus strikes a nerve- whether it be one embedded in your skin, your nose, or your ear; the pattern of that interaction is sent up the spine and into the brain, whose myriad circuits sort the pattern through various dynamic feedback loops. Sometimes these calculations results in a different signal being sent back out to the motor neurons embedded in muscles, causing action. Sometimes the signals are stored as memory.

Eventually, some of these patterns begin to contemplate themselves, and send these contemplative patterns outward through various mediums, sometimes audible, sometime visual. These patterns may be encoded within other patterns like the keystrokes I'm using, or the html code I embedded to generate the picture of a neuron above, or the pattern of pixels on your screen. Communication.

And so I run with the metaphor. Like the wandering tendril of an axon, I spew my neurochemical soup into the cavernous maw of cyberspace, across your synaptic gap; if the pattern continues, a meme is born.