“The Human Brain Can Create Structures in Up to 11 Dimensions”

Jess Brooks
Science and Innovation
1 min readAug 14, 2018

“The team used algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics used to describe the properties of objects and spaces regardless of how they change shape. They found that groups of neurons connect into ‘cliques’, and that the number of neurons in a clique would lead to its size as a high-dimensional geometric object.

“We found a world that we had never imagined,” says lead researcher,neuroscientist Henry Markram from the EPFL institute in Switzerland.

“There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to 11 dimensions.””

Ack, that’s so cool.

I’m interpreting this to mean that these networks vary across 7 variables, perhaps things like time, brain state (ex. sleep vs. wake), neurotransmitter use,…

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Jess Brooks
Science and Innovation

A collection blog of all the things I am reading and thinking about; OR, my attempt to answer my internal FAQs.