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Researchers at Leland Stanford Junior University [aka Stanford University] recently found that sections of the brain are constantly cycling into and out of a state of low firing rate, similar to the state of sleep. This appears to happen throughout the brain all the time.
Understanding these newly discovered cycles requires knowing a bit about how the brain is organized. If you were to poke a pin directly into the brain, all the brain cells you'd hit would respond to the same types of things. In one column they might all be responding to objects in a particular part of the visual field - the upper right, for example.
The team used what amounts to sets of very sensitive pins that can record activity from a column of neurons in the brain. In the past, people had known that individual neurons go through phases of being more or less active, but with this probe they saw for the first time that all the neurons in a given column cycled together between firing very rapidly then firing at a much slower rate, similar to coordinated cycles in sleep.
"During an on state the neurons all start firing rapidly," said Kwabena Boahen, a professor of bioengineering and electrical engineering at Stanford and a senior author on the paper. "Then all of a sudden they just switch to a low firing rate. This on and off switching is happening all the time, as if the neurons are flipping a coin to decide if they are going to be on or off."
Those cycles, which occur on the order of seconds or fractions of seconds, weren't as visible when awake because the wave doesn't propagate much beyond that column, unlike in sleep when the wave spreads across almost the entire brain and is easy to detect.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:52AM
The obvious computer analogy is processors designed for mobile usage, which turn on various sections only when needed. Evolution converged on power saving.
Also, this might explain the feeling that some people report in an emergency situation, when it seems like the clock slows down? If all your brain was actually on at once, a whole lot more processing could be done in the same amount of clock time.
Sorry, I don't have a car analogy...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:26AM
Some cars shut down some cylinders when the additional power isn't needed. Hybrids can often use the engine (gas) and motor (electric) together for maximum power or separately for efficiency. Your car stereo doesn't draw much power when it's not playing anything, nor do the headlights when they're turned off.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:26PM
Some of us have memories of the disastrous first attempt at that, decades ago.
Among TIME Magazine's "The 50 Worst Cars of All Time", you will find the 1981 Cadillac V-8-6-4. [time.com]
It was way ahead of the microprocessor development needed to get it right.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:35AM
The computer analogy is C and P-states. Maybe even core-cycling with Intel's Turbo-Boost or ARM's big.LITTLE thermal throttling.
The car analogy is propellant throttling and gears.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:55PM
> Also, this might explain the feeling that some people report in an emergency situation, when it seems like the clock slows down? If all your brain was actually on at once, a whole lot more processing could be done in the same amount of clock time.
I thought this was common knowledge? Likewise time seems to fly when you are sleeping (I esume the same experience when you are dead/dying). The hours just pass in an instant. Likewise when you are fully concentrating on something, time slows down (and everything seems to happen faster). Like concentrating very hard to hit something at the right time.