Human brain structures that exist in 11 dimensions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Neuroscientists have used classical mathematics to look into the structure of our brains. They found that it is full of multidimensional geometric shapes working in 11 dimensions!

The Swiss research group Blue Brain has set itself the goal of a non-trivial task - to completely reconstruct the human brain on the basis of a supercomputer. For this, scientists have created a special model using algebraic topology - a branch of mathematics that describes the properties of objects and spaces, regardless of the change in their shape. They found that groups of neurons are connected in "clicks", and that the number of neurons in a clique depends on its size as a multidimensional geometric object (we are talking about a mathematical, not a space-time concept of measurement - this is important).

“We found a world we never dreamed of,” said lead researcher, neuroscientist Henry Markram of the EPFL Institute in Switzerland. “Even in the smallest part of the brain, there are tens of millions of such objects, and their dimension ranges up to seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to 11 dimensions."

For those who do not understand, we explain: we are not talking about spatial dimensions (we, for example, perceive the Universe only in three spatial dimensions + one temporal). Instead, researchers note the degree to which neurons are connected to each other. Link nodes are "clicks". The more there are, the higher the dimension.

According to neuroscientists, our brain is made up of 86 billion neurons, closely connected with each other. They form a vast cellular network that somehow empowers us with the ability to actively think and act consciously. Given the enormous amount of connections this complex structure contains, it is not surprising that scientists still do not have a clear understanding of how it all works.