Brain complexity: signal controls between regions (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 22, 2018, 18:47 (2217 days ago) @ David Turell

There are both excitatory and inhibitory neurons:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-propagation-consciousness-potential.html

"For us to navigate through everyday situations, it is critical that electrical signals from our senses stimulated by the external world are able to reach relevant brain areas," explains Xiao-Jing Wang, Global Professor of Neural Science at NYU and the paper's senior author. "Our brain, however, is a very complicated system, with billions of neurons organized in an interconnected network with more than a hundred areas. It is therefore not easy to understand how signals may travel from area to area in an efficient manner."

"Brain areas tend to be organized in a hierarchy, ranging from "lower" sensory areas to "higher" cognitive areas. These areas have excitatory and inhibitory neurons, which either stimulate or suppress activity in other neurons.

"Understanding how neural signals are transmitted across this hierarchy, the researchers note, is still a fundamental challenge in neuroscience and served as the focal point for the Neuron study.

"For us to navigate through everyday situations, it is critical that electrical signals from our senses stimulated by the external world are able to reach relevant brain areas," explains Xiao-Jing Wang, Global Professor of Neural Science at NYU and the paper's senior author. "Our brain, however, is a very complicated system, with billions of neurons organized in an interconnected network with more than a hundred areas. It is therefore not easy to understand how signals may travel from area to area in an efficient manner."

"Brain areas tend to be organized in a hierarchy, ranging from "lower" sensory areas to "higher" cognitive areas. These areas have excitatory and inhibitory neurons, which either stimulate or suppress activity in other neurons.

"Understanding how neural signals are transmitted across this hierarchy, the researchers note, is still a fundamental challenge in neuroscience and served as the focal point for the Neuron study."

Comment: It simply shows that as in other organs there are feedback controls, just adding to the complexity of our brain.