[Verse 1]
Deep in the membrane two gates must agree,
Glutamate knocks, but the door's got a key—
A magnesium plug sits snug in the pore,
Only voltage can slide it clear of the door.
Transmitter alone won't open the case,
Voltage alone leaves an empty space,
NMDA waits for both signals to collide,
A molecular AND gate, logic deep inside.
[Chorus]
En même temps, en même temps,
Two must arrive before the current gets in,
Coïncidence, mon ami,
Timing is everything, c'est la vie,
Ensemble, ensemble, or not at all,
Deux signaux dancing down the hall,
En même temps, en même temps,
That's the secret code the neuron understands.
[Verse 2]
Nineteen forty-eight, Jeffress drew the plan,
Axons like string, laid a timing fan,
Left ear sprints down one corridor,
Right ear's echo takes a longer tour,
Different lengths mean a different delay,
Sound bends the map in a curious way,
Where the two travelers meet on the track,
That's the single cell that fires right back.
[Chorus]
En même temps, en même temps,
Two must arrive before the current gets in,
Coïncidence, mon ami,
Timing is everything, c'est la vie,
Ensemble, ensemble, or not at all,
Deux signaux dancing down the hall,
En même temps, en même temps,
That's the secret code the neuron understands.
[Verse 3]
Masakazu Konishi looked inside the owl's head,
Nucleus laminaris, where the microseconds tread,
Ten millionths of a second, a sliver, a hair,
Enough for the owl to pinpoint where,
A mouse shifts once in the moonless dark,
Coincidence cells flare up like a spark,
Each neuron tuned to its own tiny wait,
A living clock that hunts by ear, not by date.
[Bridge]
Now picture a fly watching stripes slide past,
Reichardt's trick: compare the slow to the fast,
One point delayed, its neighbor fresh and raw,
Subtract and compare, motion obeys the law,
From owls to flies to the synapse that learns,
Spike-timing plasticity, the circuit turns,
Fire together, wire together, that's the creed,
Concomitant pulses plant the learning seed,
Concomitant — meaning arriving as one,
Two threads of timing till the pattern is spun.
[Chorus]
En même temps, en même temps,
Two must arrive before the current gets in,
Coïncidence, mon ami,
Timing is everything, c'est la vie,
Ensemble, ensemble, or not at all,
Deux signaux dancing down the hall,
En même temps, en même temps,
That's the secret code the neuron understands.
[Outro]
So remember the gate, the delay, the line,
Coincidence is nature's design,
En même temps, c'est la clé,
Together, the neurons agree,
Deux signaux, one spark, one proof,
Coincidence detectors, nature's living truth.