Scientists have long been fascinated by the exceptional cognitive abilities of the human brain, like abstract thinking, language processing, and problem-solving. Understanding the neural mechanisms behind such abilities has been a subject of intense scientific investigation.
A new study reveals that information does not make its way around our brains like it does in other animals' brains. This discovery could teach us important insights into the evolution of our species.
Mechanisms of Brain Communication
The brain is a complex system, a network of neural units interacting at multiple scales. Transmission of information through structural connections, also known as brain communication, gives rise to macroscale patterns of synchronous activity.
Brain communication is defined as the transmission of information through white-matter connections. It is the foundation of the brain's computational capacities, which are connected to almost all aspects of behavior, like sensory perception and complex cognitive functions.
From an evolutionary perspective, high communication efficiency has long been recognized as a fundamental attribute constraining neural systems' evolution. Yet, there are insufficient assessments of macroscale communication processes in mammalian brain networks at phylogenetic levels.
Understanding Data Transmission in Humans
To understand brain communication networks in humans, researchers from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) investigated the patterns of information transmission to find out how messages are sent and received. The result of their study is discussed in the paper "Evidence for increased parallel information transmission in human brain networks compared to macaques and male mice."
The experts, led by EPFL senior postdoctoral researcher Alessandra Griffa, created "brain traffic maps," which can be compared between humans and animals. To make this possible, they used data gathered from humans, mice, and macaques using open-source diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). At the same time, they were awake and at rest.
The DWI scans enabled the experts to reconstruct the brain "road maps", while the fMRI scans allowed them to view various brain regions lighting up along each "road". This indicates that these pathways are relaying neural information.
The assessment reveals that information was sent along a single "road" in non-human brains, while in humans, multiple parallel pathways are identified between the same source and target. These parallel pathways are also as unique as fingerprints and can be used in identifying individuals.
Scientists hypothesize that the streams of parallel information enable multiple representations of reality and the ability to carry out abstract functions specific to humans. The researchers noted that this hypothesis was only speculative since the study did not involve testing of the subjects' cognitive or computational ability.
Still, Griffa believes that the model they designed can also be used to understand the expansion of human brain volume over time, which gave rise to more complex connectivity patterns. Her team also plans to investigate whether parallel information transmission information plays a role in neurorehabilitation after a brain injury or in preventing cognitive decline as a person ages.
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