Robert also sent in the link to https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/mysterious-spiral-signals-in-the-human-brain-could-be-key-to-our-cognition … swirls across the outer layer of the brain might be used to link different parts of it together and help process information quicker. Mysterious spiral signals – might they help organise complex brin activity?
They were discovered in functional magnetic resonance imaging, in MRI brain scans of young adults. Dementia researchers are going to be looking at this – and presumably research into children and adults with learning difficulties. Like vortices in turbulance these spirals engage in intricate interactions and play a crucial role in organising the brain’s complex activities. Interactions between multiple spirals would allow neural computations to be conducted in a distributed and parallel manner, leading to computational effieciencey.
The swrinkled outermost layer of the brain, the cerebral cortex, manages complex tasks such as memory, attention, language, perception, and possibly even consciousness. Many neurological disorders, including Alzheimers and cerebral palsy, affect the cortex in some way. Yet, neuroscience has generally focussed on the connections and interconnections between neurons [nerve cells in the brain] in order to try and determine how the cortex functions. Interesting piece of research.