An Ancient Virus May Be Responsible for Human Consciousness
livescience.com
livescience.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aezikcoCr4o
“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals.”
“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area.”
“There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease…A cancer of this planet. You are a plague... And we are the cure.”
If you want to play with the Arc protein check it out here: https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/arc/
I'm sure there's a straightforward answer to this that I'm missing, but the article isn't helping.
Arc was originally a virus and is now encoded as a gene within the human genome. (part of the point of the article)
The neurons don't die, the synapses wither, and not for lack of the gene, but for lack of the encoded messages ordered up by the gene within neighboring synapses.
The article suggests that synapses are using some sort of chemical notification system, out of band of the synapse-to-synapse firing that permits reorganization. When there is a defect in the notification system, you get autism or worse.
All of that was in the article. Maybe slow down a bit?
If it's not present the channel gets closed.
The whole purpose is to make it possible for a synapse to wither, because to reorganize something needs to be tore down.
Going further down that road, it also means that pretty much everything mankind has achieved is just a byproduct of said disease.
If there are any problems with Arc gene -- if it is not transferred properly to a child -- then child might develop various conditions (autism etc.)