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How An “Ocean” in Your Brain Helps Transmit Information

For years, the brain has been thought of as a biological computer that processes information through traditional circuits, whereby data zips straight from one cell to another. While that model is still accurate, a new study led by Salk Professor Thomas Albright and Staff Scientist Sergei Gepshtein shows that there’s also a second, very different way that the brain parses information: through the interactions of waves of neural activity. The findings, published in Science Advances on April 22, 2022, help researchers better understand how the brain processes information.

“We now have a new understanding of how the computational machinery of the brain is working,” says Albright, the Conrad T. Prebys Chair in Vision Research and director of Salk’s Vision Center Laboratory. “The model helps explain how the brain’s underlying state can change, affecting people’s attention, focus, or ability to process information.”

Researchers have long known that waves of electrical activity exist in the brain, both during sleep and wakefulness. But the underlying theories as to how the brain processes information—particularly sensory information, like the sight of a light or the sound of a bell—have revolved around information being detected by specialized brain cells and then shuttled from one neuron to the next like a relay.

Anesthetic Has Been Found to Drastically Change Primate Brain Waves. Here’s How

The widely used anesthetic propofol has a dramatic effect on the oscillating waves circulating through the brain, a new primate study shows – important findings for understanding more about our bodies under anesthesia, and ensuring it remains safe to use.

When we’re conscious, the brain is dominated by higher frequency waves (beta waves) – but under the influence of propofol-based general anesthesia, it seems that very slow-frequency traveling waves (delta waves) are much more common.

Moving through the cortex – the outermost layer of brain tissue – these waves also shift from traveling in all kinds of different directions to all pointing the same way. Some beta waves still exist, but also in small pockets not covered by delta waves.

New Brain Learning Mechanism Calls for Revision of Long-Held Neuroscience Hypothesis

Experimental observations conclude learning is mainly performed by neural … See more.


Summary: Experimental observations conclude learning is mainly performed by neural dendrite trees as opposed to modifying solely through the strength of the synapses, as previously believed.

Source: Bar-Ilan University

The brain is a complex network containing billions of neurons. Each of these neurons communicates simultaneously with thousands of others via their synapses (links), and collects incoming signals through several extremely long, branched “arms,” called dendritic trees.

For the last 70 years a core hypothesis of neuroscience has been that brain learning occurs by modifying the strength of the synapses, following the relative firing activity of their connecting neurons.

Anesthetic Drastically Diverts the Travels of Brain Waves

Summary: New findings reveal how anesthesia-induced unconsciousness differs from normal sleep in relation to delta wave activity in the brain.

Source: picower institute for learning and memory.

Imagine the conscious brain as a sea roiling with the collisions and dispersals of waves of different sizes and shapes, swirling around and flowing across in many different directions. Now imagine that an ocean liner lumbers through, flattening everything that trails behind with its powerful, parting wake.

Cybernetic Theory: Interpretive Model of Everything We Call the Universe

Another key insight of Cybernetic Theory can be referred to as “Mind Over Substrates”: Phenomenal “local” mind is “cybernetically” emergent from the underlying functional organization, whereas holistic “non-local” consciousness is transcendentally imminent. Material worlds come and go, but fundamental consciousness is ever-present, as the multiverse ontology is shown to be testable. From a new science of consciousness to simulation metaphysics, from evolutionary cybernetics to computational physics, from physics of time and information to quantum cosmology, this novel explanatory theory for a deeper understanding of reality is combined into one elegant theory of everything (ToE).

If you’re eager to familiarize with probably the most advanced ontological framework to date or if you’re already familiar with the Syntellect Hypothesis which, with this newly-released series, is now presented to you as the full-fledged Cybernetic Theory of Mind, then this 5-book set will surely present to you some newly-introduced and updated material if compared with the originally published version and can be read as a stand-alone work just like any book of the series:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R2K7ZK2?tag=lifeboatfound-20?tag=lifeboatfound-20.

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Film director — Nicolas Gazeau.
Music — Jérôme Fagnet.
Production — Content Factory by Prodigious.


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Whole-Brain Preclinical Study Illuminates How Epileptic Seizures Originate

Summary: Seizures originate from an excess of excitatory over inhibitory neural activity in confined regions of the brain, and spread only when they overcome strong inhibitory activity in surrounding regions.

Source: Weill Cornell University.

New evidence from a zebrafish model of epilepsy may help resolve a debate into how seizures originate, according to Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators. The findings may also be useful in the discovery and development of future epilepsy drugs.

Widespread Brain Receptor Hides Surprising Mechanism of Action

Summary: Glutamate binds to the subunits of its receptor only in specific patterns. The findings upend previous belief that each subunit binds glutamate independently and points to a new level of complexity in neurotransmission and drug response.

Source: Columbia University.

One of the most important molecules in the brain doesn’t work quite the way scientists thought it did, according to new work by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Carnegie Mellon University.

Elon Musk said his Neuralink brain chip could help treat morbid obesity. Scientists say it’s a long shot — but not an impossibility

Elon Musk believes his Neuralink brain chip could help treat morbid obesity. Experts say the billionaire’s dream isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem.

“I don’t think it is any more implausible than other claims for the potential of neurotechnology,” Professor Andrew Jackson, an expert in neural interfaces at Newcastle University, told Insider.

Musk made the suggestion in a TED interview on April 14, thereby adding “morbid obesity” to a growing list of ailments he believes Neuralink could help treat.