Limerick - noun - a kind of humorous verse of five lines, in which the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other, and the third and fourth lines, which are shorter, form a rhymed couplet.
In 2004 I was a participant in a Symposium (Microcircuits: The Interface between Neurons and Global Brain Function) in Berlin. The participants met in small groups to discuss different topics and to create a summary which would be presented to all attendees. One night at dinner there was a limerick contest between the groups. The content was to be related to the research topics being discussed. Each group presented a limerick and then another, until it was forced out of the competition when it could not. The group I was in and one other group were the last two standing. My group had two limerick experts but it was our groups turn to present and they did not have one prepared. So to keep our group in the competition, I presented the one I had written but wasn’t sure it met the qualifications of being a limerick. This gave the two experts time to regroup and the contest continued until it was finally declared a tie.
My Limerick
One microcircuit allows a locust to fly. Another breathes but can also sigh. A third is quite different, and its distribution is wide. But it moves the head & also the eye.
The pacemakers cause excitation to occur in the complex Botzinger. Add a dash of inhibition and we discover what potassium leak conductances are fer.