Talk:Synaptic gating

Peer Review

Overall I think this article is well written. After reading the article I came away with a relatively large amount of information. I did however find some things that I thought could be changed. The first thing that came to mind was when you use quotation marks around words such as "gatekeeper". I am not sure if this is the scientific term actually used in the scientific community. I think you should use an appropriate term that has scientific meaning. If these quoted words are actually used in the scientific community, then disregard that comment. The next thing I noticed that could be expanded was when you talk about inhibition. I noticed it was a major subtopic, but when I got to that area, it had little information. If you could expand in this area, I think it will increase the value of the article. Finally, I think the current research section needs to be expanded. Right now there is only one sentence in this subtopic. Maybe you could go into the experiments being done. Overall the article is good, just need to look into those things in my opinion. Hope this helps. Finnry (talk) 20:43, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice work so far, just a few comments. I would link synapse somewhere in your first paragraph of the topic just in case readers don't have much background in this subject. Also, maybe think about linking more words in the article to other Wikipedia articles (for example in the intro hyperpolarization (biology), depolarization, and threshold potential). I think a good way to enhance the article further would be to add an image or two. I'm not sure how easy it is to find these, but check out commons because any image here can just be added to the article pretty easily. An idea of an image that can probably be found here would be an action potential image/graph which may be helpful for the reader to understand the article better. Under the "Synaptic gating and disease" section where you talk about schizophrenia, I would link that subhead to the main article of schizophrenia by adding

Main article: schizophrenia

immediately under the subheading. Also I noticed that a lot of places are missing citations--make sure that they are all linked up to the references at the end of your article. Good job on being concise throughout the article, it was pretty easy to understand and I thought everything seemed relevant that you included. Tbaril52 (talk) 02:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Overall this article looked great so far. I thought you included some interesting information and did a good job of picking out the important facts to include. One of the main things that I noticed was the lack of citations in the introduction. It seems like you may be waiting on some sources based on the rest of the article but just make sure to cite some of the specific information, particularly in the first paragraph. Another thing I would suggest would be to try and include something in the introduction mentioning the larger scale consequences of imposing a gate on a cell. You discuss the more immediate effects it has on the cells in the synapse but it would be interesting to know if or how that affects downstream cells, the surrounding environment, the circuit as a whole, etc. I'd also be interested to know if this phenomenon is restricted to any specific areas of the nervous system. I'm not sure how much research is available or if you would be able to find that information but those are just some suggestions to give the article a larger context. However, I thought you included some great details on the mechanisms and functions as well as the related diseases.MKMurphy (talk) 05:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

First of all, great job on this – I liked the structure and headings that you used to organize the information you had, and for the most part the information was easy to understand, especially for a topic that seems still largely under investigation. Something I was wondering about as I was reading was where the phrase “synaptic gating” was first coined. Another suggestion I might have is to include (depending on how much research actually exists) why the brain has a limited ability to process information (under “Role in spatial attention” subheading). It seems like you have three solid sources for that section; maybe expand upon those? What does each individual source say, or do they all have relatively the same information and in the same context? Furthermore, I liked how you included links to other Wikipedia pages but some of these linked pages were not as helpful as I hoped. For example, when I visited the AND gate page, I found it hard to understand, rather than informative and detailed. In this case, perhaps you could include a descriptive phrase summarizing whatever is most important in the Wiki you are linking to, so someone doesn’t necessarily have to look at the link. Moreover, (and this is a minor detail but) in the section about schizophrenia, could you define what PFC stands for? And finally, I agree with Finnry above. I understand that the research must be very limited for this topic but if the current research is not voluminous, maybe consider including where the research is being directed around synaptic gating – towards the diseases? Or the mechanism? I’m not sure you run the risk of confusing the reader by including even more information from the studies that are in progress. Good luck and thanks for sharing some fascinating aspects of this process! KelleyAmbrose (talk) 06:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Good job explaining things step by step to make it easier to understand. In the beginning you do a good job linking words to other articles and suggesting articles to be viewed, but you do less of this as the article goes on. If pages exist for these terms, I would suggest linking "bistable neurons", "inhibitory modulation", "nucleus accumbens" and some of the other physiological terms. There were a few sentences I found unnecessarily wordy like "it becomes necessary that the brain have the ability..." in the section labeled "Role in spatial attention". I thought any time you had to explain the fluctuating down and up states of bistable neurons you presented it very clearly and logically so it was easy to follow. I would try to expand the research section and rather than just saying there is no evidence, say what kinds of research could be done to find evidence. Overall, good job!