Is the Brain More Powerful Than We Thought? Here Comes the Science

If you’ve ever played around with an old music amplifier, you probably know what a firing neuron sounds like.

A sudden burst of static? Check. A rapid string of pops, like hundreds of bursting balloons? Check. A rough, scratchy bzzzz that unexpectedly assaults your ears? Check again.

Neuroscientists have long used an impressive library of tools to eavesdrop on the electrical chattering of neurons in lab animals. Like linguists deciphering an alien communication, scientists carefully dissect the patterns of neural firing to try to distill the grammatical rules of the brain—the “neural code.”

By cracking the code, we may be able to emulate the way neurons communicate, potentially leading to powerful computers that work like the brain.

It’s been a solid strategy. But as it turns out, scientists may have been only brushing the surface—and missing out on a huge part of the neural conversation.

Recently, a team from UCLA discovered a hidden layer of neural communication buried within the long, tortuous projections of neurons—the dendrites. Rather than acting as passive conductors of neuronal signals, as previously thought, the scientists discovered that dendrites actively generate their own spikes—five times larger and more frequently than the classic spikes stemming from neuronal bodies (dubbed “soma” in academic spheres).

"It’s like suddenly discovering that cables leading to your computer’s CPU can also process information—utterly bizarre, and somewhat controversial."

“Knowing [dendrites] are much more active than the soma fundamentally changes the nature of our understanding of how the brain computes information,” says Dr. Mayank Mehta, who led the study.

These findings suggest that learning may be happening at the level of dendrites rather than neurons, using fundamentally different rules than previously thought, Mehta explained to Singularity Hub.

[link to singularityhub.com (secure)]