
Neuroscientists Say They've Found an Entirely New Form of Neural Communication - quakeguy
https://www.sciencealert.com/neuroscientists-say-they-ve-found-an-entirely-new-form-of-neural-communication
======
etrautmann
main article link:
[https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP276904](https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP276904)

It seems as though the authors are advocating for the role of extracellular
electric fields to enable spiking. This is known as ephaptic coupling, which
is a fairly well studied phenomenon, but it is unknown the degree to which it
contributes to standard computations and processing within different neural
systems.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephaptic_coupling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephaptic_coupling)

~~~
DoctorOetker
the abstract was mentioned in this post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=SubiculumCode](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=SubiculumCode)

> ...low‐frequency periodic activity (<1 Hz)... propagate with speeds around
> 0.1 m s−1

so thats a wavelength of ... _at least_ 10cm! not much information density
here... this is probably the reason nobody is interested much in these
effects. Even if they can chaotically influence the state of the system, it
won't contain much useful information...

~~~
mattkrause
One theory is that the waves themselves don’t carry much information, but set
the stage for other kinds of transmission or computation.

In the rodent hippocampus, for example, theta oscillations (3-7ish Hz) don’t
tell you much about the animals’ spatial position. The spiking rate of place
cells contains some information about where the animal is, but it’s fairly
coarse. However, combining spiking and the phase of the slow oscillation
(e.g., cell is firing at the trough vs peak) provides much more precise
information about where the rat is.

A related idea is that oscillations help route information by alternatingly
facilitating and suppressing different areas. At one phase of the oscillation,
information might preferentially flow from visual areas to higher-level areas.
At another, the visual input might be suppressed while memory structures get
“their turn to talk.”

~~~
DoctorOetker
note that my observation is not that the information contained is not "zero
usefull information" but "not much usefull informmation". I certainly think a
local clock would be usefull, and contains very little information.

But any large amount of information density is simply not supported by these
observations due to simple wave aspects. A low information signal (for example
highly predictable clock, or some other low frequency, high brain volume
signal say perhaps a breathing _rate_ not actually the breathing frequency)
can still be important.

I was only replying to the information processing comment

~~~
mattkrause
?

I…don't see the argument here. I was just trying to provide some actual
examples from neuro.

------
aklascheema
I remember reading an article a while back and it went something like this.
They had a digital circuit which implemented some function (might have been a
filter, but no 100% sure). They let engineers design the circuit to perform
the function. Then they let a computer iteratively (ML?) place the components
to achieve that same function. It got so good that it was able to use less
gates but some how worked just as well.

They were really confused and finally realized that unbeknownst to them the
computer had taken advantage of the fact a moving charge creates a magnetic
field and vice versa. This fact was exploited by the computer (inadvertently,
lol).

~~~
rectangleboy
I think this is what you're looking for: [https://www.damninteresting.com/on-
the-origin-of-circuits/](https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-
circuits/)

"Dr. Thompson peered inside his perfect offspring to gain insight into its
methods, but what he found inside was baffling.

The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic
gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback
loops.

Five individual logic cells were functionally disconnected from the rest— with
no pathways that would allow them to influence the output— yet when the
researcher disabled any one of them the chip lost its ability to discriminate
the tones.

Furthermore, the final program did not work reliably when it was loaded onto
other FPGAs of the same type."

~~~
aklascheema
Yes! This is the exact article I was talking about. I spent quite a bit of
time yesterday trying to find it but had no luck. Thank you so much :)

------
Barrin92
>The discovery offers some radical new insights about the way neurons might be
talking to one another, via a mysterious process unrelated to conventionally
understood mechanisms, such as synaptic transmission, axonal transport, and
gap junction connections.

One of the most humbling books I have ever read is _Wetware_ by Dennis Bray.
There is an unbelievable richness when it comes to computation and
storage/transport of information in biological organisms and cells that are
simply unparalleled.

I feel this is especially relevant given that we are (again) living in times
where people talk a lot about the 'intelligence' or power of contemporary
learning machines.

------
cr0sh
I know it's early stuff, and I am not an expert on this by any means, but I
wonder if any of this would be something applicable to a biological means for
"backpropagation"?

Just to clarify: As far as I am aware, there hasn't been any biological
equivalent for neural learning akin to what is called "backpropagation" as
used by common implementations of artificial neural networks in order to learn
and generalize a task or function.

That there has only been a "forward signal" from neuron to neuron observed,
with no way for error signals to move "backwards" adjusting the "connection
weights" of biological neurons (note: this is not how biological neurons work
at all; that much I do know - I am just simplifying a bit here).

Could this new communication form potentially be used for such error
propagation for learning? I know the article seemed to make the idea that it
only happens in "slow waves" and during "sleep"; but I wonder if it isn't
actually happening all the time...?

Well - now I am just speculating on a subject I have little to no knowledge
in, so I will stop here.

------
qwerty456127
> Scientists think they've identified a previously unknown form of neural
> communication that self-propagates across brain tissue, and can leap
> wirelessly from neurons in one section of brain tissue to another – even if
> they've been surgically severed.

Now it sounds curious why it can't leap wirelessly from one brain to another
one this way.

~~~
masteranza
I've already tested this 6 years ago with a friend. We had this idea that it
could be possible by putting our skulls close together. We've tried a variety
of techniques from thinking about a specific number from 1-10, one of us
visualizing the answer as hard as he could, the other one waiting passively
for the answer to 'occur to him'. After making sth like 100 tries and writing
down our answers - the results were negative, same as for pure chance. Then
we've realized that maybe abstract information cannot be sent this way so we
agreed on just two messages - very happy vs really sad, where we would imagine
extreme emotions. Obtained the same negative results.

~~~
qwerty456127
Being only slightly less skeptic than is popularly considered reasonable (or
more skeptic - skeptic about skepticism itself too) I'd say your conclusion is
not strictly valid. Perhaps you were doing it wrong. Like people who can't
swim are doing it wrong until they get it. Or perhaps ice skating can make a
better example. Imagine you have never ever used you hand and don't remember
how to - can you expect it to start moving the way you want just by imagining
the motion (you probably are aware of the difference between inner experiences
taking place when imagining your hand moving and when actually moving it
already) and waiting it to occur?

There is a Ukrainian psychotechnologist Oleg Bakhtiyarov[1] who has written
(in a fairly scientific manner) a book titled "active consciousness" (only
available in Russian unfortunately as well as a number of his lectures on
YouTube) on how to develop mind functions most of the people don't know they
have. I (as well as many other people, mostly those practicing freediving)
have successfully mastered some of the techniques he teaches and can this way
guarantee his job is far from being pure science fiction, I have not came far
enough to develop telepathic skills though (yet I believe those interested in
trying should probably go this way).

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Bakhtiyarov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Bakhtiyarov)

~~~
masteranza
You're point is valid, yet I still find it very unlikely. At some point after
numerous tries you might even start fooling yourself (and others). I'll give
the guy a chance though.

------
pkghost
I'm surprised to see no mention of the two mechanisms that jump out at me as
candidate explanations: a) standard electrical induction b) standard
conductance via the extracellular matrix
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_matrix))

W/r/t b), they do claim that they sliced the hippocampus and then observed
activity induced across the preserved gap, but it's not clear (from my light
read) that the tissues weren't still touching such that the axons/dendrites
were gapped, but the ECM was not; if this were the case, then I'd expect
signals to propagate across severed neuronal connections via standard
conductance in the ECM.

More please!

------
rv-de
This is extremely interesting and basically boils down to the following
neurological observation:

Anything (molecules, electric charge, magnetic fields etc) that is originally
created by brain activity and itself detectable by other parts of the brain -
what ever those are (mostly neurons, axons or dendrites I suppose) was
factored in during the evolution of the brain and is henceforth utilized as a
signal. That's why the brain is so incredibly complex and the classical neural
network model doesn't cut it.

In other terms if X is systematically caused by A and is then affecting some B
then that X will at some point serve as a signal factored into the neural
processing and is no longer just noise! This happens evolutionarily over
millions of years as well as dynamically in context of neural plasticity to
some extent.

The same concept is true for anything in the body - which is why the
separation of the body into modules / organs is problematic. But the effect is
much more potent in the brain due to the high density of signalling and
processing.

------
edoo
It almost sounds as if there is neuron like behavior that emerges due to the
information available in the raw electrical phenomena of the brain. It could
be analogous to a machine learning circuit where the substrate itself responds
neuron like to the overall electrical loading of the board.

------
daodedickinson
Reminds me of Arc proteins [https://www.newsweek.com/breakthrough-memory-
formation-virus...](https://www.newsweek.com/breakthrough-memory-formation-
virus-hiv-protein-infects-brain-arc-778236)

------
sircalvin
Is this different from retinal waves?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_waves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinal_waves)

~~~
mattkrause
A bit different.

The retinal waves consist of action potentials, which the canonical way that
neurons communicate with each other. To do this, the cells form a specialized
structure called a synapse: the presynaptic cell releases some
neurotransmitter into it, which receptors (sensors) on the its post-synaptic
partner detect. Here, the idea is that neurons can communicate, albeit less
efficiently, without actually forming a synapse.

As an analogy, synaptic transmission is like plugging your phone into a
speaker: there’s a direct, explicit connection. This coupling is more like
when a speaker picks up some noise from the cell phone’s modem even though
they’re not connected.

------
bayesian_horse
It reminds me a little of this impossible reactionless space drive.

~~~
dschuetz
Yes, and now we also know that they are "very excited about it", because
neural networks also work wireless.

I mean, the brain tissue is full of charged particles and molecules, there are
membrane potentials which trigger molecule transports at synaptic gaps. Now
they've discovered that there are electrostatic fields inside the brain? Duh?
Imagine what happens when they find out there are also magnetic fields!

~~~
bayesian_horse
I would like to add that I don't blame either these researchers or the ones
with that drive.

The most honest expression of the scientific method is to try as hard as you
can to disprove your own theory.

Sometimes it's just really really hard not to fool yourself, and statistics
could be called the science of how to not screw yourself scientifically.

~~~
DoctorOetker
did they in fact physically separate the tissue in 2 halves? or was it a
localized cut? even if they separated in 2 halves, how did they measure the
electrical activity? with conductors? or optically? even if optically, did
they assume light could not cross from one sensor to the other or did they
prevent light from the first optical electric field sensor from entering the
second optical electric field sensor, say by using different wavelengths and
filter for each? even if they excluded optical leaking, you still need to
exclude the possibility that there is simply an ambient electric field in the
lab whose correlation at 2 points we are measuring. So you need a control
setup without brain tissue to compare the correlations.

Otherwise we might be investigating the equivalent of: dot of light moving at
twice the speed of light! ... by reflecting a laser beam of a fast rotating
mirror on a distant screen... yes the dot can move faster than light, but the
dot is not a physical signal, the dots at different times are separate signals
with a common cause, and no signal was speeding beyond c...

at some point you realize that there may be more important questions to invest
time and effort in...

------
TeMPOraL
Might be Dunning–Kruger speaking, but I'd be surprised if that was _not_ the
case, and I am surprised that this seems to be a _new_ area of exploration.

I mean, think about it: we're talking about a network of electromagnetically
unshielded electrical devices, swimming in a sea of conductors, that is
believed to have evolved its functionality over time. Since evolution is a
random optimization process, why _wouldn 't_ it exploit electromagnetic
properties of the environment, if they're reliable enough? It's not like
evolution understands the concept of a wire, or chemical signal.

(Also reminds me of that story of an FPGA design generated by genetic
algorithm, which ended up exploiting the electrical properties of the
particular chip/board onto which it was uploaded.)

~~~
orbifold
I know of a Max Planck Institute researcher who has written up a theory on how
dendrites are really antennas and how neurons really communicate wirelessly.
He is waiting for his Nobel price any day now...

------
swerner
This will soon be cited by quacks as “evidence“ for their overpriced uselesss
therapies.

Bioresonance, Homeopathy, Reiki, ...? „Brain cells communicate wirelessly, and
my method integrates with that communication!“

------
JoeAltmaier
Telepathy of a sort, at least over microscopic distances!

Anyway, I wonder if the fields can be externally applied for therapeutic
purposes (inducing sleep etc)

~~~
mattkrause
This is actually what I work on.

The umbrella term you’re looking for is transcranial electrical stimulation,
or tES. It is also called tACS (AC for alternating current), tDCS (for direct
current), or tRNS (for random noise), depending on what type of electricity is
being used. In most cases, conductive electrodes are placed on the head and a
weak current is passed between them. This is thought to generate an electric
field that polarizes the neurons between them and interacts with the cells’
on-going electrical activity.

The idea itself is very old: someone in 46 AD apparently cured headaches by
applying electric fish to their foreheads. It’s been rediscovered a few times
since then, and there’s been a huge boom since about 2000, with people trying
it for everything under the sun in both healthy people and a wide variety of
patients, with a lot of hype.

Despite that, it’s still unclear how it works, or indeed if it works at all.
The electric field that reaches your brain is rather weak—-the skin and skull
shunt away a lot of the current. A lot of the human experiments are not the
greatest (small sample size, strange methodological problems) and there has
been some concern that many of the effects either aren’t real or are due to
confounds (e.g., placebo effects, or changes in attention/motivation due to
the tingling sensation it causes on the scalp), and there’s been a lot of
“counter-hype” about how the whole thing is bunk.

I am fairly certain it does _something_ , though it needs to be applied (and
evaluated) carefully. Over the last few years, I—-and some awesome
collaborators—-have been recording neural activity from monkeys receving tES.
We find neural effects at multiple levels ranging from single cells to long-
range functional connectivity, along with effects on the animals’ behavior.
We’ve got a few papers here:
[http://packlab.mcgill.ca/publications.html](http://packlab.mcgill.ca/publications.html)
(look for my name; the lab does a lot of different things). There’s a lot more
to be done though.....

~~~
toomuchtodo
How does transcranial magnetic stimulation differ from applying electrical
current directly?

~~~
mattkrause
The general idea is similar, but the details are quite different.

As you might remember from physics, moving a conductor relative to a magnetic
field induces an electric current in the conductor. In a generator, the magnet
is often fixed while the conductor is spun around by a water, wind, or steam-
driven turbine. Neurons are conductive but tricky to move, so we move the
magnetic field instead. TMS uses strong electromagnets to generate magnetic
pulses. The changing field induces currents in the neurons.

Magnetic fields are not attenuated by the skull or scalp, so the resulting
field is much, much stronger. In practice, TMS often produces an initial burst
of activity, followed by a longer period of suppression. This can be used to
temporarily and reversibly inactivate a tiny chunk of the brain, which is
great for research. It may also be a way to “reset” neural circuits that have
gotten stuck in some weird state (this is one hypothesis about depression, and
TMS does seem to help with it).

I think of tES as “nudging” the neurons’ own activity towards some state that
you want, while TMS is more like a sharp rap. It’s not obvious if one is
always better than the other. TMS devices are pretty large (lots of
capacitors) and fixed, while you could imagine tES being more suitable for use
outside a clinic.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question!

~~~
mattkrause
Literally what they pay me for :-)

Anything else you want to know?

