THETA POP
Li Yuan, though on some occasions she is Lin, used to be with Ayumo Tashiro of the Demented Consortium at the cesspool of academic futtering, AKA Nanyang Technological University. For unknown reasons or else reasons of buttering the froast of boreship, she chose to be my enemy as well as the color mustard yetllow and here is what she looks like in imagined reality:
I had a look at what she's up to at the Luetgeb Labs, University of California, San Diego. Straight away bumped into an article with the pompous title:
Time cell sequences during delay intervals are not dependent on brain state and do not support hippocampus-dependent working memory
Objectively this might be worrying, not least because high profile dudes like Buzsáki & Moser, dudettes like May-Britt Moser (with the afore-mentioned Moser), as well as O'Keefe, presently at Itchy Cunt-farts Loo-loo, might raise an eyebrow or two. Because it seems to cut too close to their shared 2014 Nobel Pop Prizer.
It is also worrying for a physiologist because it does not mean that time is working in space during delayed intervals of brain states. Yes.
The article is a hodge-podge of data-ish garbage, most probably recycled or left-over or fallen-through from Yuan's 'work' at Luetgeb Labs, see here, here, and here.
Some items of "...concern..." in that Nat Comm article of Yuan's are:
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two groups of rats were implanted with very different probes, one was trained in an average of three (3) days while the other in ten (10) days. Perhaps not explicitly stated but I would bet only the latter data (was it four [4] rats?) was ''used'';
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exactly what the rat had to do is not clear. I think the rat was meant to show theta brain activity on demand after an interval in a space where motion was either possible or impossible, like Schrödinger style, for a reward next time it remembered the last delay. With time.
Leaving aside nonsense, abstract or concrete, such as delayed reward either way or no way in a zone or condition but never memory - please find the full correspondence here - the main point is:
There are no theta, nothing remotely resembling theta, in all the spaghetti bumbu-majabalubu figures of that article. Promise. The signal is so heavily filtered and, I wager, edited, that dreaming of finding theta in that cockamamie excuse for a signal is, technically, a joke.
dhgf
The reason for this is because the authors claim to have screwed a "...ground screw..." then hooked that up to a bare silver wire. Clearly, the authors know jack shit about measuring...well...anything electric really.
Briefly, ground cannot be uninsulated from the alleged point of contact with the subject to the fabled ground, contact potential with the non-silver screw is problematic, and the point of contact must be silver-chloride or nothing.
The message sent to Nature and others returned the reply along the lines "tell the reader to read the what-what-bung-shamang-doodle we have transparently our panties on show" from one Zhongmin Lu who looks like this in realistic imagination:
On her Google Scholar page she has something from 2005 and another thing from 2010 which definitely have nothing to do with her.
An Elan B. Barenholtz at Florida Atlantic University claims in his CV to be "...Chair of dissertation committee and direct supervisor...". But... Zhongmin Lu, in her thesis here which was submitted the the faculty of the the at FUA, appears not to mention a Barenholtz at all.
It appears Zhongmin Lu moved with Gregory (or Greg) Talisker (or T) MacLeod (or Macleod) from The University of Texas at San Antonio to Florida Atlantic University (where the departments or centers or institutes or whatever appear to have identity disorder(s). Keeping in mind Greggy is also at Tulane University School of Medicine New Orelans.
Zhongmin Lu spouts some neoliberal corporate ass-kissing nonsense on her Linkedin page related to a job she had, though not, so far as one may tell from appearances, another with which she is affiliated in a conference (?) paper thingy published.
But you see, Zhongmin Lu also did a quickie stint at the Komiyama Lab. Which is also at University of California, San Diego. In fact, a Wankun Li in his or her thesis thanks Zhongmin Lu by name, as well as have a Leutgeb on his committee thesis whatever.
Not exactly in bed together, but really the Zhongmin Lu should not have edited the Leutgeb paper, if she had a shred of decency, which she obviously does not in view of her "reader go look-see must have we transparent undies" so on reply.
In Zhongmin's thesis page 137, equation (19) is:
[sic] Which is odd.
And then. A little later. After some ''rearranging'' or and what not or what. We find equation (21) mind you to be:
Which should indicate to the astute, or at least non-dead, observer that both the previous and the present must be hogwash.
And to remove all doubt, she writes on page 138:
...Therefore, our analysis suggests that optimization of energy efficiency drives towards high PAZ, a conclusion that should be generalizable to all presynaptic terminals where neurotransmitter release has a steep dependence on Ca2+ entry...
...which is, from a physiological perspective, akin to saying that water is wet.
Once more, the correspondence with Zhongmin Lu, under-published phyciologically challenged editor or senior finger or whatever at Nature, and others, is here.
Her funding came from here apparently, lots and lots of money.
