BOOLEAN ALGEBRA BOULDERS : BRAIN GLOBAL ESSAY

 

EARLY in 2021 a team of researchers from Tampere University in Finland, led by Michael Barros, used gene-edited astrocytes to show that these calcium-ion signals can perform Boolean algebra, the language of digital computing.

In particular, the team were able to run Boolean operations called AND and OR with a rate of accuracy up to 90%.

In 2022 Erik Peterson of Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, published a mathematical proof showing that, in principle, an astrocytes network can run any computer algorithm imaginable.

This hints astrocytes may form a secondary computational network, parallel to that of neurons, which is able to regulate the primary network via tripartite synapses. 

The merging picture of the brain then, is less an aristocracy - with neurons looking down on their global inferiors - than a democratic society of cells working together to produce thoughts.

In 2022 Alexei Verkhratsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences dubbed this idea the '' active milieu '' within the brain.

One consequence of the active milieu interpretation is a realisation that when glia misbehaviour there is trouble. A large body of evidence now suggests that dysfunctional glia play an important role in many neurological and psychiatric conditions. 

Autism is one. In 2017 Ishizuka Kanako of the Nagoya Institute of Technology, in Japan, found a link between an increased risk of autism and the presence of a pair of genetic variants known to disrupt, in microglia, the expression of a protein called CK3CRI.

And in 2020 Xu Zhixiang of Scripps Research, in San Diego, showed a range of microglial protein-synthesis problems cause autism-like symptoms in mice.

Current thinking is that misfiring microglia in people with autism fail to prune synapses thoroughly enough during brain development, resulting in overconnected brains with heightened sensitivity to stimuli, both sensory and emotional.

Moreover, the effect that Scientist, Dr. Xu found disproportionately affects male mice - a bias that, perhaps not coincidentally, is also a feature of autism in human beings.

'' Neurons are not the only cells that thinks.'' 

This Master Essay Publishing continues into the future. The World Students Society thanks The Economist, January 2023.