To produce its many functions, including thought, the brain works at many scales. Information such as goals or images is represented by coordinated electrical activity among networks of neurons, while within and around each neuron a mix of proteins and other chemicals physically carries out the mechanics of participating in the network.
A new paper by researchers at MIT, City — University of London, and Johns Hopkins University posits that the electrical fields of the network influence the physical configuration of neurons’ sub-cellular components to optimize network stability and efficiency, a hypothesis the authors call “Cytoelectric Coupling.”
“The information the brain is processing has a role in fine-tuning the network down to the molecular level,” said Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, who co-authored the paper in…
