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I suspect not very complex at all. My rank speculation is that neurons are mostly a medium for brain waves and the real processing happens with the waves themse

I suspect not very complex at all. My rank speculation is that neurons are mostly a medium for brain waves and the real processing happens with the waves themselves. Looking for how the brain works in the neuron is like looking for how oceans work in the water molecule.

brokencode 5y ago
Where do you think these “brain waves” come from? Brain activity is the result of the interaction of neurons and external stimuli. Just as transistors are fundamental to processors, neurons are fundamental to brains, and it is important that we understand these basic building blocks if we ever hope to understand the brain and intelligence as a whole.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  >Where do you think these “brain waves” come from? Propagation delay and circular loops. No it doesn't have to be "external" stimuli. There's no explicit input and output layer in how a real brain is constructed. That is an artificial constraint put on artificial neural nets to make a programmers job easier. A real brain can and likely does have self stimulating loops. >Just as transistors are fundamental to processors, neurons are fundamental to brains Transistors are also quite simple as individual units and the computational complexity comes about in how they are connected.
  - lebuffon 5y ago
    "A real brain can and likely does have self stimulating loops" This is what I understand causes epilepsy. At least when they are out of control.
folli 5y ago
Wow, that sounds very new-agey. You should also weave in a mention of quantum physics.
- ordu 5y ago
  It is an old idea. In a 1875 the first EEG showed waves. Then, naturally, theories like "alpha-rhythm is a consciousness" sprung into existence. Only at the end of XX century they became deprecated.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  It really isn't new-agey. Brain waves certainly exist, can certainly be measured, and the presence or absence of certain frequency bands is certainly relevant to various brain functions (EG ~40Hz alpha waves and being conscious). There really is evidence that certain groupings of neurons act like band pass filters, and that something similar to the frequency tricks of old telephone equipment is used in the brain to pass multiple messages to different recipients while using the same neural "wire". Furthermore, the brain is far to wet and warm for quantum mechanics to be relevant. Coherence times would suck.
tsimionescu 5y ago
This has long been the assumption, but most recent research seems to suggest the opposite direction. Not to mention, even if inside-neuron computation turned out to be largely irrelevant for the whole-brain computation, it's still fascinating to look at how much computation, sensing and planning is happening inside any cell just for the cell to live in its environment. We tend to make a huge distinction between single organisms and their constituent parts, but human cells are not all that hugely different from bacteria in terms of their need for doing smart work to live.
- bckr 5y ago
  Yeah, brainwaves seem to matter much less in science news I've seen over the last decade than they did before. I think brainwaves are probably mostly an epiphenomenon of the electrical signals that make up our brains' computation. Of course, EM waves being what they are, there is feedback between that computation and EM waves. But I think a good way to think about it might be like a computer giving off radio signals during certain computations, like []. [] https://news.softpedia.com/news/emitting-radio-waves-from-a-computer-with-no-radio-transmitting-hardware-501260.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/emitting-radio-waves-from-a-...
netizen-936824 5y ago
So the content of a signal has no meaning? That seems absurd on its face.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  Actually the opposite. The signal which is propagating has meaning, an individual neuron being active generally does not.
- lebuffon 5y ago
  The difficulty I would think, is determining what is the real activity and what is just a side-effect. For example old CRTs gave off RF signals that could be decoded to read the contents of the screen but the CRT display was not designed to be a radio transmitter.

brokencode 5y ago

Where do you think these “brain waves” come from? Brain activity is the result of the interaction of neurons and external stimuli. Just as transistors are fundamental to processors, neurons are fundamental to brains, and it is important that we understand these basic building blocks if we ever hope to understand the brain and intelligence as a whole.

IIAOPSW 5y ago
>Where do you think these “brain waves” come from? Propagation delay and circular loops. No it doesn't have to be "external" stimuli. There's no explicit input and output layer in how a real brain is constructed. That is an artificial constraint put on artificial neural nets to make a programmers job easier. A real brain can and likely does have self stimulating loops. >Just as transistors are fundamental to processors, neurons are fundamental to brains Transistors are also quite simple as individual units and the computational complexity comes about in how they are connected.
- lebuffon 5y ago
  "A real brain can and likely does have self stimulating loops" This is what I understand causes epilepsy. At least when they are out of control.

folli 5y ago

Wow, that sounds very new-agey. You should also weave in a mention of quantum physics.

ordu 5y ago
It is an old idea. In a 1875 the first EEG showed waves. Then, naturally, theories like "alpha-rhythm is a consciousness" sprung into existence. Only at the end of XX century they became deprecated.
IIAOPSW 5y ago
It really isn't new-agey. Brain waves certainly exist, can certainly be measured, and the presence or absence of certain frequency bands is certainly relevant to various brain functions (EG ~40Hz alpha waves and being conscious). There really is evidence that certain groupings of neurons act like band pass filters, and that something similar to the frequency tricks of old telephone equipment is used in the brain to pass multiple messages to different recipients while using the same neural "wire". Furthermore, the brain is far to wet and warm for quantum mechanics to be relevant. Coherence times would suck.

tsimionescu 5y ago

This has long been the assumption, but most recent research seems to suggest the opposite direction. Not to mention, even if inside-neuron computation turned out to be largely irrelevant for the whole-brain computation, it's still fascinating to look at how much computation, sensing and planning is happening inside any cell just for the cell to live in its environment. We tend to make a huge distinction between single organisms and their constituent parts, but human cells are not all that hugely different from bacteria in terms of their need for doing smart work to live.

bckr 5y ago
Yeah, brainwaves seem to matter much less in science news I've seen over the last decade than they did before. I think brainwaves are probably mostly an epiphenomenon of the electrical signals that make up our brains' computation. Of course, EM waves being what they are, there is feedback between that computation and EM waves. But I think a good way to think about it might be like a computer giving off radio signals during certain computations, like []. [] https://news.softpedia.com/news/emitting-radio-waves-from-a-computer-with-no-radio-transmitting-hardware-501260.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/emitting-radio-waves-from-a-...

netizen-936824 5y ago

So the content of a signal has no meaning? That seems absurd on its face.

IIAOPSW 5y ago
Actually the opposite. The signal which is propagating has meaning, an individual neuron being active generally does not.
lebuffon 5y ago
The difficulty I would think, is determining what is the real activity and what is just a side-effect. For example old CRTs gave off RF signals that could be decoded to read the contents of the screen but the CRT display was not designed to be a radio transmitter.