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What this article leaves out is that sparse coding is most common in neocortex (the wrinkly outside part of your brain). In structures underneath there are a lo

What this article leaves out is that sparse coding is most common in neocortex (the wrinkly outside part of your brain). In structures underneath there are a lot of brain cells that fire away all the time: the thalamus, the basal ganglia, the dopamine cells in the midbrain that fire like pacemakers. I've recorded from the cerebellum in deeply anesthetized animals; there is still a lot of spiking going on in there. Presumably the same thing is true for humans. So sparse coding is nifty--and people have made some cool algorithms with it, cf. Cris Rozell's work--but it doesn't mean you're not using your whole brain

snake117 11y ago
> Today we know that a large population of cortical neurons are “silent.” > This energy budget puts limits on how much of the cortex can be engaged at once I passed over it during my first read through as well. But at certain parts the author did state explicitly that these were cortical neurons.
- nickledave 11y ago
  She totally does say they're cortical neurons. But it seems the point of the article is that most of the brain is dormant. I'm not sure that most of the brain is dormant.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    Except that's not how it reads: > The quiet neurons might be doing more than refining perceptions. Though they spike infrequently, we know from intracellular recordings that they still receive inputs from other neurons, which causes their membrane voltages to fluctuate. The sum of these fluctuations and spikes constitute what’s commonly known as brain waves. Over the past 15 years scientists have begun to amass evidence that these brain waves play an active role in information processing, shunting some neural inputs while enhancing others, for example, or altering the timing of spikes. This suggests that spikes are not the sole information-carrying signal in the brain, and that, in turn, the “inactive” neurons are doing much more than it seems.

snake117 11y ago

> Today we know that a large population of cortical neurons are “silent.” > This energy budget puts limits on how much of the cortex can be engaged at once I passed over it during my first read through as well. But at certain parts the author did state explicitly that these were cortical neurons.

nickledave 11y ago
She totally does say they're cortical neurons. But it seems the point of the article is that most of the brain is dormant. I'm not sure that most of the brain is dormant.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Except that's not how it reads: > The quiet neurons might be doing more than refining perceptions. Though they spike infrequently, we know from intracellular recordings that they still receive inputs from other neurons, which causes their membrane voltages to fluctuate. The sum of these fluctuations and spikes constitute what’s commonly known as brain waves. Over the past 15 years scientists have begun to amass evidence that these brain waves play an active role in information processing, shunting some neural inputs while enhancing others, for example, or altering the timing of spikes. This suggests that spikes are not the sole information-carrying signal in the brain, and that, in turn, the “inactive” neurons are doing much more than it seems.