A detailed map of the cells and synapses in a segment of a human brain sample has been created through a collaboration between Harvard and Google. The ultimate goal is to create a full map of a human brain like this, with each synapse and other structures detailed.
The study identifies two common forms of variation in human brain networks: border shifts and ectopic intrusions.
Border shifts involve changes in the borders between functional areas, while ectopic intrusions are shifts in brain organization at remote locations.
Both forms of variants are heritable but differ in their location, network associations, activations during tasks, and prediction of behavioral phenotypes.
Border shifts involve changes in the borders between functional areas, while ectopic intrusions are shifts in brain organization at remote locations.
Both forms of variants are heritable but differ in their location, network associations, activations during tasks, and prediction of behavioral phenotypes.
New study on mice decision-making reveals that choice is not a singular moment but a reflection of the brain’s preexisting state.
The research, using Buridan’s Assay, suggests that the mice’s brain constantly broadcasts its goal, even before options are available, with patterns of neuron activity predicting choice.
Hunger and thirst don’t directly drive behavior; instead, they modulate the brain’s goal-setting, with an element of randomness causing switches between needs, ensuring both are met over tim
The research, using Buridan’s Assay, suggests that the mice’s brain constantly broadcasts its goal, even before options are available, with patterns of neuron activity predicting choice.
Hunger and thirst don’t directly drive behavior; instead, they modulate the brain’s goal-setting, with an element of randomness causing switches between needs, ensuring both are met over tim
In this personal essay, Stephen Wolfram recounts his fifty-year intellectual journey to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a quest sparked by a mysterious physics textbook during his childhood. His path evolved from early attempts at simulating molecular dynamics on primitive computers to a professional focus on particle physics and cosmology, where he frequently grappled with the tension between increasing entropy and the spontaneous emergence of complex structure. This search eventually led him away from traditional statistical mechanics and toward the study of cellular automata through his work in symbolic computation. Ultimately, Wolfram describes how this shift allowed him to discover that highly complex, organized behaviors can emerge from simple computational rules rather than requiring microscopic irreversibility, fundamentally reshaping his understanding of how complexity arises in the universe.
consciousness relates to a dynamic process of self-sustained, coordinated brain-scale activity assisting the tuning to a constantly evolving environment, rather than in static descriptions of brain function (3–5). In that respect, neural signals combine, dissolve, reconfigure, and recombine over time, allowing perception, emotion, and cognition to happen (6).
The second law of thermodynamics is among the most sacred in all of science, but it has always rested on 19th century arguments about probability. New arguments trace its true source to the flows of quantum information.
