How do brains tune in to one neural signal out of billions?

(MENAFN – The Conversation) The human brain sendshundreds of billions of neural signalseach second. It’s an extraordinarily complex feat. A healthy brain must establish an enormous number of correct connections and ensure that they remain accurate for the entire period of the information transfer – that can take seconds, which in ‘brain time’ is pretty long. How does each signal get to its intended destination? The challenge for your brain is similar to what you’re faced with when trying to engage in conversation at a noisy cocktail party. You’re able to focus on the person you’re talking to and ‘mute’ the other discussions. This phenomenon is selective hearing – what’s called thecocktail party effect . When everyone at a large, crowded party talks at roughly the same loudness, the average sound level of the person you’re speaking with is about equal to the average level of all the other partygoers’ chatter combined. If it were a satellite TV system, this roughly equal balance of desired signal and background noise would result in poor reception. Nevertheless, this balance is good enough to let you understand conversation at a bustling party. How does the human brain do it, distinguishing among billions of ongoing ‘conversations’ within itself and locking on to a specific signal for delivery? My team’s researchinto the neurological networks of the brain shows there are two activities that support its ability to establish reliable connections in the presence of significant biological background noise. Although the brain’s mechanisms are quite complex, these two activities act as what an electrical engineer calls amatched filter- a processing element used in high-performance radio systems, and now known to exist in nature. Neurons singing in harmony Let’s take a moment to focus on just one of the hundreds of billions of nerve fibers in […]

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