Michael Levin

It had to be invented.

That's right.

Yeah.

I mean, it is incredible.

The guy who discovered gap junctions, Werner Lowenstein, I visited him.

He was really old.

Good point.

He rediscovered gap junctions.

But when I visited him in Woods Hole maybe 20 years ago now, he told me that he was writing, and unfortunately he passed away, and I think this book never got written.

He was writing a book on gap junctions and consciousness.

And I think I think it would have been an incredible book because because gap junctions are magic.

I'll explain why in a minute.

What happens is that just imagine the thing about both these ion channels and these gap junctions is that many of them are themselves voltage sensitive.

So that's a voltage sensitive current conductance.

That's a transistor.

And as soon as you've invented one, immediately you now get access to, from this platonic space of mathematical truths, you get access to all of the cool things that transistors do.

So now when you have a network of cells, not only do they talk to each other, but they can send messages to each other and the differences of voltage can propagate.

Now to neuroscientists, this is old hat because you see this in the brain, right?

There's action potentials that, you know, the electricity,

You can you can they have they have these awesome movies where you can take a zebra like a transparent animal like a zebrafish.