Lovely! And a single excitatory postsynaptic density is an amazingly complex aggregate of 500+ different protein species — perhaps hundreds of each type (see Seth Grant's work:
www.synaptome.genes2cognition.org
And yet we typically treat this amazing molecular complex as an “on-off” switch. What a joke of reductionism. A better crude metaphor is that a single synapse is a context-dependent microprocessor.
I think that's a good metaphor where context is the impact of previous states.
Every piece of the system is incredibly dynamic and has an huge degree of nuance which impacts the computation including within the synapse, the postsynaptic density, and the presynaptic neuron. The amount and content of vesicles as well as location and density of voltage gated calcium channels can change the content and quantity of signal sent. And that's before we talk about all of the other regulatory proteins presynaptically
And yet we typically treat this amazing molecular complex as an “on-off” switch. What a joke of reductionism. A better crude metaphor is that a single synapse is a context-dependent microprocessor.