#action potential

WELL @fishsticksloser WANTED TO SO NOW YOU GET TO SEE TOO

Synapses are sites of neuron-to-neuron connections. They are spaces between a presynaptic (giving information) neuron and a postsynaptic (receiving information) neuron. The synaptic connections between neurons and skeletal muscle cells are generally called neuromuscular junctions, and the connections between neurons and smooth muscle cells or glands are known as neuroeffector junctions. Neurotransmitters are brain chemicals that communicate information via electrical impulses throughout our brain and body. They relay signals between neurons (nerve cells), transmitting signals across a chemical synapse from one neuron to another "target" neuron. This process is called neurotransmission.

Source: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Neurotransmitter-Receptors-in-the-Postsynaptic-Stephenson-Hawkins/6148a8948a3145d1cfe6de61a3d161235bffe9bd

Action potential travels down the axon (check out the post about the structure of a neuron). When depolarized, the signal arriving releases pre-made neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft (space that separates 2 neurons). It happens in the following way. Neurotransmitters are packed into vesicles that fuse into the membrane. Those vesicles then become part of the membrane and the molecules of neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic cleft. They diffuse across the cleft and bind to specific molecules called receptors on the postsynaptic terminal. Ionotropic receptors (e.g., ligand-gated ion channels) open as soon as the right neurotransmitter is binded, while metabotropic receptors (G protein-coupled receptors) cause a complex chain of actions.

Neurotransmittors have been shown to have a range of different effects on human behaviour, such as mood, sleep, sexual arousal or mental illness. In Antonova’s study, male participants were asked to take part in a double-blind study, meaning that the participant and the researcher were not aware of which group they were a part of. The participants were randomly allocated to either the scopolamine group or the placebo saline solution group. The participants were then placed into an fMRI in order to read their brain activity. They were told to play a few rounds of a virtual reality game with a joystick in order to become familiar with the controls. The game consisted of the participants being dropped in the middle of an arena and told to find a special landmark. Each round of the game started them at a different location within the arena. After a few rounds, the researchers recorded their brain activity in the next few rounds.

(Omg I didn’t see these until now, sorry!)

20. What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

I feel like I have zero handle on the minor characters! Although, I often feel that about Simon and Baz, too... 🤷‍♂️

But tbh I think the minor character I write the best would be the Mage, so I suppose he’s my fav. (I know, I know, fuck the Mage.) I really like villains, especially complicated ones.

Though, I think I always err on the side of making him too obviously shitty, which is something I would like to get better at. Subtlety is not my strong suit...

24. How did you come up with title for Three Chord Progression/Limit Break?

and

25. Which idea came to you first in the Three Chord Progression?

I will answer these together because they are closely linked.

I wanted to write a little Valentine’s Day fic, but I didn’t have any ideas. And finally on the morning of, the idea for Love Season popped into my head, which I churned out in a few hours. The title came from me frantically googling for something fitting that featured the words “love” and “progress”, haha. The song Love Season by J-Boog contains enough choice lyrics and cheesy “we gonna get down tonight” kind of vibes that I was sold. A sampling:

I love you girl, like how we are So when you get in that dress you look best by far You look so smooth, looking so sexy.

Let's rewind, remember we fell in love with each other Remember the long talks, the world felt it stopped, yeah Now we can escalate, seems like we're already determining our fates Love season is in progress, girl don't stress

Body heat is gettin' higher on the double, You shoulda kept your mouth shut cause you are in trouble

And she ask how you doin' And then the rest is magic all in the air And I sing a song that sounds like this here, yes, oh. Love season is in progress, girl don't stress

I told myself it would be a one-shot, and then immediately decided there was too much potential, hyuk hyuk. And so, I figured that ought to be what the next story was about, but thennnnn I figured that a trilogy would be better than just a sequel...

So I hastily created a series on AO3 and titled it Three-Chord Progression because it was the only title that popped into my head, and once it was in there, I couldn’t let it go. (I don’t like the title at all, unfortunately.)

The titles for Action Potential and Limit Break were the same problem—they popped into my head and wouldn’t go away.

If you’d like a biology lesson on action potentials:

When a neuron is not sending a signal, it is “at rest”. The cell’s “resting potential” is when the inside is balanced to be a consistent -70mV compared to the outside. Different ions have varying degrees of success trying to travel through the neuron’s cell membrane—some ions can move freely, others need to be forcibly sent through a pump. A stimulus can cause these pumps to start churning, which will raise the internal charge. If this depolarization reaches a certain threshold, then there is a sudden explosion of electrical activity, causing rapid depolarization. It’s that big explosion that is called the “action potential”. It’s an all-or-nothing response—if the threshold is not reached, nothing will happen, but once the threshold is reached, an explosion of the same intensity will always occur. And then it all resets back to the rest phase.

Anyway, it’s a somewhat obscure concept, but I liked it for them, especially with how in that fic they’re both struggling with how to get things going. And Simon keeps having these waves of pleasure that he then tramps down, not letting himself meet that threshold for a while. But then he does, and boom! Explosion. But also, now they are back to the start again...

Limit Break is named after another very niche thing that is basically exactly the same as an action potential, but with a key difference:

In some games (Final Fantasy in particular) and many anime, there is this concept of a limit break, wherein a character has this build-up of frustration and potential, before just fucking snapping and releasing a huge burst of power. It’s something that’s played up as this really hype thing, usually saved for when the main character is facing down the Big Bad or something like that. The difference between this and an action potential is that there is no hard reset after. Usually, once the limits are off, they’re more or less off for good. Not that the character can then be that explosively powerful every time, but rather, now that they know the power is there, they can more easily harness it.

That’s the kind of vibe I wanted to get across in Limit Break. That once they took their limiters off, they could realize what’s available to them and access that place more freely.