Scientists made a sensational discovery, they found that the human brain is home to structures and shapes that have up to 11 dimensions. Neuroscientists applaud this discovery, saying "we have found a world that we never even knew existed."
The mathematical methods of algebraic topology have helped scientists find structures and multidimensional geometric spaces in brain networks.
According to experts, a new study has proven that the human brain is home to structures and shapes that have up to 11 dimensions.
The human brain is estimated to be home to a staggering 86 billion neurons, with multiple connections from every cell in every possible direction, forming a super-large cellular network that somehow makes us capable of thought and consciousness, Science Alert reports.
According to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, an international team of scientists rallied around the Blue Brain project has produced results never seen before in the world of neuroscience. This team was able to find structures in the brain that represent a multidimensional universe, revealing the first geometric design of neural connections and how they respond to stimuli (stimuli).
Scientists have used advanced computer modeling techniques to understand exactly how brain cells are able to organize themselves to perform complex tasks.
Researchers used mathematical models of algebraic topology to describe structures and multidimensional geometric spaces in brain networks. The study shows that structures are formed at the same time they alternate in a "union" that generates a precise geometric structure.
Conceptual illustration of brain networks (l) and topology (r), courtesy of the Blue Brain Project.
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Henry Markram, a neuroscientist and director of the Blue Brain project in Lausanne, Switzerland, said: “We found a world we never knew existed. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, in seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures of up to 11 dimensions.”
According to experts, each neuron inside our brain is able to connect with its neighbor, in a certain way, forming an object with complex connections. Interestingly, the more neurons join the group, the more dimensions are added to the object.
Using algebraic topology, the scientists were able to model a structure inside a virtual brain generated by computers. The scientists then ran experiments on real brain tissue to test the results.
After the scientists added a stimulus (stimulus) to the virtual brain tissue, they found that the groups gradually coalesce into larger dimensions. They found that there were voids or cavities between these groups.
Ran Levi of the University of Aberdeen told WIRED:
“The emergence of high-dimensional cavities as the brain processes information means that neurons in the network respond to stimuli (stimuli) in an extremely organized manner.
It's like the brain responds to a stimulus (stimulus) by building and then destroying a tower of multidimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc… The progress of brain activity resembles a multidimensional sand castle that materializes from the sand and then disintegrates."
While three-dimensional shapes have height, width, and depth, objects discovered by experts in the new study cannot be described in three-dimensional dimensions in our world, but mathematicians use 5, 6, 7 and up to 11 dimensions to describe them.
Professor Cees van Leeuwen from Ku Leuven, Belgium told Wired:
“Outside of physics, high-dimensional spaces are often used to describe complex data structures or system conditions, such as the state of a dynamical system in state space.
Space is simply the union of all the degrees of freedom that a system has, and its state describes the values that these degrees of freedom actually take”.
The research is published in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.
