Subgroup Saturday was a very dynamic and exciting way to give a hit start to BPS20. At the “Membrane fusion, fission & traffic” subgroup, Professor Richard W. Tsien was awarded with the 17th annual Sir Bernard Katz award for excellence in research. Tradition has it, that the recipient of the award gives a lecture at the end of the symposium. And I was glad to have attended it.
Professor Richard Tsien, with his long and bright career in defining the evolution, types and action mechanisms of vertebrate calcium channels and synaptic vesicle fusion events, presented the latest findings of his lab on a new mechanism of regulation of release probabilities.
The lecture started with him showing this image: a crossroad sign indicating two paths, failure and success, and him reminding us that, for the synapse, “…variation between success & failure is what makes learning & memory…”. In other words, if an action potential arrives to the synapse, it will not necessarily lead to the release of neurotransmitters. Instead, this information will be stored at the synapse leading to what neuroscientists describe under the term “synaptic plasticity”, that is the mechanism defining mechanism of learning and memory.
Is this, though, a mechanism of learning specific to the synapse? That statement drove me into a more philosophical path. What about our failed attempts? Our successes lead to accomplishments, which is the reason they were “fired” at the first place, but aren’t our failures what strengthens our learning? Don’t we need to fall from the bike to learn how to ride it? And, don’t we need to use the wrong buffer to learn how our protein could behave differently in it? A failed experiment, or a new lesson learnt?
To all my peeps out there, this philosophical view describes our brain physiology, and vice versa. Take a deep breath, and a slightly distant view, and think what your failed assay, or any other failure -I am sure you have enough as well- have taught you. Synapses learnt the lesson before us: a failed attempt might in fact have greater impact than a successful one.
Thank you synapse, Professor Tsien and BPS 2020 for thinking simulations in various levels.