A biophysicists and theoretical physicists devised a simple mathematical model that accurately represents a three-cell microcircuit in a chicken's brain. Demonstrating that microcircuit behavior could be captured mathematically by 3 equations, giving insight to the delicate abstraction process occurring in the brain.

If the brain, for example, processes too much information it will overload but if is employs too much abstraction no insight is gained.

The model breaks down 3 neurons into one on the assumption that they both do and follow the same rules. They do this, more or less, by analyzing a microcircuit consisting of a few neurons, all of whose interconnections can be traced.


Of particular interest may be using this model to better understand how genes become expressed during embryonic development

It may also explain why it is difficult to understand the brain by measuring the strength of its synaptic connections in the lab.
The researchers argue that focusing on the individual synaptic weights is incorrect. Even to the point of suggesting that focusing on these weights has gotten in the way of understanding brain function.

"That's it in a nutshell. On the one hand, there are the individual nerve cells whose membrane depolarization is at the basis of everything and on the other hand, there's lyric poetry, serial murder and the calculus. In between there are hundreds of billions of nerve cells, with hundreds of trillions of connections. Scientists understand the bottom end and can say useful things about the top end, but getting from one end to the other is another story."

Tags: brain, neural science, synaptic connections, mathematics,

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