Your Brain Is Like the Internet

It's a series of interconnected networks: study
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 10, 2010 5:40 PM CDT
Your Brain Is Like the Internet
A drawing of the brain with the lobes colored pink, green and blue to differentiate them.   (Wikimedia Commons.)

The human brain works like a personal Internet and not a "top-down" command structure as previously thought, scientists say. USC neurologists used a novel technique for tracing signals throughout the brain that allowed them to see the direction of connections in brain tissue—that is, where certain signals were coming from and going to. The traditional view of the brain holds that it is a "top-down" structure, meaning that processing areas are directed by higher-level centralized sub-intelligences.

In that case, the direction of signals should flow from those central processing points to independent regions, Psychology Today reports. But the researchers found that all regions were highly interconnected, including some that were not known to directly communicate.
(More brain stories.)

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