I will praise Thee;
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are Thy works;
Psalm 139:14
"Scientists have recently identified a unique form of cell messaging occurring in the human brain that’s not been seen before.
Excitingly, the discovery hints that our brains might be even more powerful units of computation than we realized.
Back in 2020, researchers from institutes in Germany and Greece reported a mechanism in the brain’s outer cortical cells that produces a novel ‘graded’ signal all on its own, one that could provide individual neurons with another way to carry out their logical functions.
In neurons, the signal is in the form of a wave of opening and
“The dendrites are central to understanding the brain because they are at the core of what determines the computational power of single neurons,” Humboldt University neuroscientist Matthew Larkum said.
Dendrites are the traffic lights of our nervous system. If an action potential is significant enough, it can be passed on to other nerves, which can block or pass on the message.
This is the logical underpinnings of our brain – ripples of voltage that can be communicated collectively in two forms: either an AND message (if x and y are triggered, the message is passed on); or an OR message (if x or y is triggered, the message is passed on).
Arguably, nowhere is this more complex than in the dense, wrinkled outer section of the human central nervous system; the cerebral cortex. The deeper second and third layers are especially thick, packed with branches that carry out high order functions we associate with sensation, thought, and motor control.
In addition to the logical AND and OR-type functions, these individual neurons could act as ‘exclusive’ OR (XOR) intersections, which only permit a signal when another signal is graded in a particular fashion.
“Traditionally, the XOR operation has been thought to require a network solution,” the researchers wrote."
OrganicallyHuman