Introducing the brain: information transfer mechanisms (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 30, 2023, 16:25 (119 days ago) @ David Turell

Different in humans:

https://www.sciencealert.com/unique-flow-of-information-identified-in-the-human-brain?u...

"A team led by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland used advanced data analysis techniques on top of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to analyze brain activity in humans, mice, and macaques.

"Comparing the resulting brain 'traffic maps', the researchers found that the human brain uses multiple parallel pathways to shift information from one region to another, whereas the mice and macaque brains use just single channels.

"'What's new in our study is the use of multimodal data in a single model combining two branches of mathematics: graph theory, which describes the polysynaptic roadmaps; and information theory, which maps information transmission (or traffic) via the roads," says Alessandra Griffa, a biomedical engineer from EPFL.

"'The basic principle is that messages passed from a source to a target remain unchanged or are further degraded at each stop along the road, like the telephone game we played as children."

"To use another analogy, the information traffic moving around the brain is like traffic traveling down a road with multiple stops along the way. Our brains seem to be wired to simultaneously use multiple roads to get the convoy of signals to its destination. (my bold)

"What's more, the researchers discovered that these parallel pathways are as unique as fingerprints: studying the particular way that information flows around a brain can distinguish individual nervous systems.

"'Such parallel processing in human brains has been hypothesized, but never observed before at a whole-brain level," says Griffa.

"How these multiple channels affect thought processing, and why we have them when other animals don't, is beyond the scope of this study. However, the researchers think our larger brains have enabled more complex patterns of connectivity."

Comment: not a surprising discovery. The degree of mental activity evidenced by our brain's conceptual capacity tells us the circuits are extremely complex.