Talk:Reticular activating system

I am quite disappointed by this entry because the lack of functional focus

For instance, the figure is anatomy-oriented in and old-fashioned way. See: for a nicer example of an image. The Dutch Wiki version on Arousal gives a better (also not perfect) functional perspective. I hope the real experts agree with me on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.125.178.72 (talk) 17:36, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Do we have a citation for GTD being studies as related to the RAS?

I have removed the reference. If anything in the motivational literature mentions the RAS then I strongly suspect it of being pseudoscientific. Drugs and bullets can directly fiddle with the RAS; it would terrify me if I thought motivational programmes could. Cotard 15:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Fatigue

I had hoped to see mention of how this related to fatigue. Mathiastck 12:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Removed a paragraph

Another way to look at the RAS is to consider why you can sleep at night through all of the normal sounds of your house, but wake up to the sound of the ruffling pajamas of your child as they walk into your bedroom. This is a function of the RAS. It filters out all of the things you know are normal stimuli and activates when something new or different occurs.

The above may be "correct" but it is not written in an encyclopedic style. - Hordaland (talk) 16:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Further Reading?

Are there any books on the topic or resources on the web other than scientific papers?--78.49.205.163 (talk) 19:47, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anything that isn't junk. The RAS was the hottest topic in neuroscience in the 1950s, but interest dropped way off long before the internet came into being. If you find anything, it will probably discuss the RAS in relation to sleep. Looie496 (talk) 20:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Questionable citation

Reference #16 (as of today) is not a checkable source, so I am removing it:

Interview with Edgar Garcia-Rill, Phd. Center for Translational Neuroscience at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Interviewed by Dexter Bateman, October 15, 2009.

Gorthian (talk) 09:25, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Arousal—Real Life Examples

An instructor used “reticular activating system” during an Advanced Management class and emphasized its real-life meaning with an example most of us adults will recognize: You decide to buy a new car. You begin the best possible investigation that your personality will permit. You narrow the field to several vehicles. You narrow this field to one. Shortly, you see this vehicle on the road all of the time, whereas before, you hardly recognized it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PointyHairedEE (talk • contribs) 21:04, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

main picture

Picture is a poor choice; doesn't really show the ARAS. Also, the label says ventral, but this really looks dorsal. The leminiscus is not ventral, and certainly the superior cerebellar peduncle is not ventral but is dorsal. Pollira (talk) 19:41, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

ARAS vs RAS

@Iztwoz: The reason I renamed the page to the "ascending reticular activating system" (ARAS) is that it disambiguates the system with the descending reticular formation (the ARAS is otherwise known as the ascending reticular formation); the latter is sometimes (AFAIK, uncommonly) referred to as the "descending reticular activating system", despite the fact that it mediates an entirely different process as the ARAS (i.e., motor function as opposed to arousal). This page is clearly not about the descending and ascending pathways, otherwise it would be fairly redundant with the reticular formation article.

The use of "ascending reticular activating system" is only marginally less commonly used in pubmed compared to "reticular activating system", I think it would be worthwhile to disambiguate the topic by renaming the article to "ascending reticular activating system". Of the 401 papers that include the term "reticular activating system" in the title or abstract, 223 include "reticular activating system" without the word "ascending" and 159 include the term "ascending reticular activating system".

At the moment, there isn't an article on the descending reticular formation, but when there is, its creation will result in a disambiguation problem with this article if the present name is retained. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:04, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I suppose covering the descending pathways here works too, but the whole article needs to be restructured (I.e., partitioned into descending vs ascending RAS sections) and expanded if we take this approach. I only covered the ARAS when I rewrote the anatomical components section, so that will require expansion. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 11:52, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi Seppi - meant to respond here first. Seems that there is not much (at the moment) to say about the descending system so have included it here - if things get greatly expanded then each could have its own page. Cheers --Iztwoz (talk) 12:00, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Iztwoz: Actually, I just noticed after googling "reticulospinal" (a synonymous term with the descending pathways) that we do have an article exclusively about the descending reticular formation: Reticulospinal tract. Should we create appropriate redirects to that page and cover the ARAS here, or merge both into 1 article? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 12:19, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Good contextual reference IMO: Human neuroanatomy (2016) textbook. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 12:31, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Seppi333: Just found a lot of refs to the descending reticular activating system in the Google books search - so think reticulospinal tract could be redirected here with content merged. Since the ascending one is predominantly referred to feel it's only natural to look for the descending one. --Iztwoz (talk) 15:43, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

There's likely to be a lot of overlap with reticular formation after that merger. Should we not just merge everything into that article? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 15:52, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Agree with that - there is a lot of merging of stubs and general sorting that needs doing around these articles - think that your idea would also lend itself to future changes. Cheers --Iztwoz (talk) 15:55, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I figured I'd just check with others at WT:NEURO for their thoughts on the best approach, so I notified them of this thread for their input. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 15:59, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I think maybe a point that doesn't get enough emphasis is in the paragraph at the end of reticular formation: The term "reticular formation" is seldom used anymore except to speak in generalities. Modern scientists usually refer to the individual nuclei that comprise the reticular formation. The reticular formation is generally viewed nowadays as a sort of pseudo-structure -- a grouping of unrelated things, along the lines of the so-called limbic system. Looie496 (talk) 18:36, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

This statement though is uncited - the term is still much used like this one three months old. As long as it is being used it will be being looked up - same goes for limbic system - so do not see the point of criticism.? Wikipedia is for the general reader not the scientist. Also the second sentence is contradictory - it says 'usually refer to the individual nuclei that comprise the reticular formation'; so that would leave the reticular formation as an entity.--Iztwoz (talk) 20:35, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think what Looie means is this (emphasis added as bold and underline):

Detailed and lengthy excerpt on the reticular formation

RETICULAR SYSTEM Based on the phylogenetic developmental level, the cerebrum can be divided into four functional parts that affect awareness: — brainstem (state of arousal — quantitative component of awareness; reticular system); — diencephalon (thalamus: coordinating functions of pons and brain hemispheres, modulating and gating incoming information to the cerebral cortex from sensory organs; hypothalamus: regulating sleep and wakefulness); — limbic system (affective behaviour); — cerebral cortex (qualitative component of awareness). The state of arousal of the cerebral cortex is affected by two main neuroanatomical areas: the ascending reticular system, which is in the pons, and the cognitive system, located in the cerebral cortex and subcortical nuclei. These two regions communicate via the diencephalon, where ascending signals are processed. The hypothalamus plays a crucial role in the regulation of circadian rhythms and in the transition from wakefulness to sleep. The reticular system extends throughout the medial part of the brainstem, into the medulla oblongata, pons, and midbrain (mesencephalon), up to the unspecific reticular nuclei of the thalamus. This name refers to neurons with multiple projections, which together create a complex network of high degrees of both convergence and divergence. Projection from the reticular system is extralemnisceal (outside of the main cerebral paths), nonspecific and diffuse. The projection extends into the cerebral cortex and medulla. The reticular system is therefore divided into an ascending part, connected to sensory pathways (collaterals of all ascending pathways reach the nuclei of the reticular formation), and a descending part, connected to pathways regulating muscle tonus and activities of the adrenergic system. Both the ascending and descending parts of the reticular system have stimulatory and inhibitory components. The stimulatory component dominates, particularly in the ascending reticular system. Each receptive brain field receives two types of stimuli, a specific one (from specific sensory pathways), and a nonspecific one (originating from the reticular system). Blockage of each of these stimulatory pathways causes disturbances of perception [15]. Before stimuli reach the cortex, the reticular system first becomes activated, and this in turn primes the cortex for signal reception. The cortex lacks complete capacity for receiving sensory stimuli if nonspecific activation does not occur. The dual effect of the stimulus upon cortical cells is reflected by a primary potential (specific stimulus effect) and a delayed secondary potential (nonspecific stimulus effect). The inferior part of the reticular formation forms the reticular nucleus of the medulla, while the superior part forms the intralaminar and reticular (nonspecific) nuclei of the thalamus. The reticular formation has multiple projections into the forebrain, medulla, brainstem and cerebellum, and contains nearly 100 nuclei. The most important of those are the raphe nuclei, locus coeruleus nuclei, pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus, magnocellular nuclei, pontine and thalamic reticular nuclei. A functional classification identifies three groups of nuclei: median column, medial column and lateral column, each of them having a specific function [16]. In brief, the median column activates the reticular system (having the function of internal generator- transformer), the medial column is a switch and modulator of sensory information and regulates muscle tonus, while the lateral column coordinates the function of vegetative centres. —  (<ref name="ARAS"> from the article)

NB: we list 12 "important" nuclei for the ARAS. The reticular formation apparently consists of ~100 nuclei per this ref. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:53, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I came here from the note at WT:NEURO, and I don't have much to add, other than that I think merging all three pages into a single page looks like a good idea. As for terms being outdated, that's sort of an "inside baseball" kind of thing for some neuroscientists, but terms like this and like limbic system are so thoroughly ingrained that we should continue to use them because readers will look for them, and we can describe new developments in terminology in the text. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Ok, since we all seem to be in agreement, I'm going to take a stab at merging and restructuring all the content from the Reticular activating system→Reticular formation and Reticulospinal tract→Reticular formation mergers sometime soon-ish using these 2 references (particularly this chapter on the reticular formation from the "Human Neuroanatomy" textbook). Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:11, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

References

Merger complete

@Iztwoz, Looie496, and Tryptofish: I finished merging the reticular activating system and reticulospinal tract articles into the reticular formation article. How's it look? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 01:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

It looks very good. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 17:34, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

As above - nice job. --Iztwoz (talk) 06:54, 28 September 2017 (UTC)