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You think humans are complicated? ‘course we are! With brains like ours, its only natural. Even with loads of advances in the field of neuroscience, we still have not come around to fully understanding the human brain. Rather, it is all so difficult to comprehend- the complexities of its networks, cliques, and cavities.

There are apparently as many as 11 dimensions of geometrical structures operating in our brains as claimed by a new research conducted by a group of neuroscientists from the EPFL institute, Switzerland. A little disconcerting isn’t it? Given how we are used to seeing and imagining things up to three dimensions, eleven seems to a bit unreal. Well, there is no arguing with scientific evidence.

Using a branch of mathematics that studies topological spaces- studies properties of spaces and objects regardless of how they change their shape later on-known as algebraic topology, scientists have been able to document the presence of about 86 billion neurons with multiple connections from each cell, connecting in every possible direction, resulting in a vast cellular network that somehow enables us to think and makes us capable of consciousness.

Neocortex is that part of the mammalian brain which is highly evolved and

is involved in high-level functions like cognition and sensory perception. The scientists used a model of this structure to apply the mathematical concept and study the organ.

“We found a remarkably high number and variety of high-dimensional directed cliques and cavities, which had not been seen before in neural networks, either biological or artificial.

Algebraic topology is like a telescope and microscope at the same time; it can zoom into networks to find hidden structures, the trees in the forest, and see the empty spaces, the clearings, all at the same time.” Say the team members of the study.

When the researchers provided a stimulus to the brain tissue model, it was seen that the neurons reacted in a highly organized manner in response and that the progression of activity within the model was multi-dimensional; like when you imagine a sandcastle to rise out of sand and then sublimely disintegrate.

Despite needing tremendous amounts of hardwork and future research, it is definitely not the last of hearing how mathematics has yet again come to our rescue and helped us realize this amazing find.

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