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Researchers identify a new form of brain communication

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house mouse/George Shuklin (CC BY-SA 1.0)

Mouse studies find brain waves that can bypass synapses and gaps, even communicate with severed nerves:

Neuroscientists have known for some time that slow, periodic activity in the brain can generate electric fields that activate neighboring cells, thus establishing a form of communication that is not transmitted through synapses or junction gaps.

Now one team may have identified instances of such communication between neurons in different brain tissues in mice, even between tissues that have been severed by surgery.

Dominique Durand of Case Western Reserve University told science writer Peter Dockrill, “I’ve been studying the hippocampus, itself just one small part of the brain, for 40 years and it keeps surprising me.” (
PETER DOCKRILL, “NEUROSCIENTISTS SAY THEY’VE FOUND AN ENTIRELY NEW FORM OF NEURAL COMMUNICATION” AT SCIENCEALERT )

Such surprising new findings show that comparisons between a human brain and a computer greatly underestimate the complexity of the brain.

Although even the axons of our neurons can function like smart PCs, our brains are not really billions of little computers but something much more. Just how it all works together is still very poorly understood and the origin of consciousness is simply unknown. (Mind Matters) More.

If we were in the middle of an information revolution, how would you know?

See also: The brain exceeds the most powerful computers in efficiency (Eric Holloway)

The brain is not a meat computer

and

Has science shown that consciousness is only an illusion?

Comments
There are probably interesting implications of this finding regarding the effects of electric fields produced by the cell phones on the brain.nightlight
February 21, 2019
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