activation locked together in time are assumed to be functionally integrated. Another

activation locked together in time are assumed to be functionally integrated. Another time-dependent neuronal characteristic of current interest involve neurons or neuronal clusters that beat with almost strict periodicity, the oscillatory pacemakers. For example, the program of research by Professor Al Selverson at University of California at San Diego, among others, has elucidated the role of these rhythmic pattern generators, both autonomous and those emerging from particular patterns of network connections. A wide variety of functional links involving neuronal pacemakers has been demonstrated. They range from the oscillatory transport of calcium through membrane channels in neurons and heart muscle, smooth muscle oscillations of the pylorus muscle of the stomach, the neuronal ganglion driven chewing motions of the jaws of invertebrates and the retina-to-brain hypothalamic cells gating human circadian rhythms coupling our body’s hormonal clocks to light cycles. Though regular rhythmicity in neuronal discharges is an intuitively attractive idea and relatively easy to quantitate using simple sine wave trigonometric transformations, in the real brain it is statistically rare. The commonest neuronal discharge pattern observed is that of intermittent bursting, clusters of neuronal discharges in time in which the inter-discharge intervals irregularly stretch and contract like the bellow pleats of a syncopated accordion. Bursts of repeated firing of some unpredictable length followed by silences of equally mysterious durations. Their behavior can be represented as statistical measures using non-normal, /ong tailed distributions and in-between entropies described previously. For a whole human example, although the rhythm of manic depression is commonly thought to involve periodic cycles, careful study using motility patterns of the timing through life of these episodes of extreme mood states by Professor Allan Gottschalk at the University of Pennsylvania and others have demonstrated an irregularly intermittent bursting pattern in manic-depressive episodes, getting more frequent with age. Neuronal inter-discharge intervals seldom demonstrate what is called a regression to the mean like the normal distribution of heights, as one increases the number of people measured, the tighter the distribution around the mean. Neurons, much like our own irregular pattern of doing things (in spite of our plans), the statistical 99 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013599