One of the most beautiful storms in the universe is that shapes and patterns can be found in a wide variety of contexts: the golden spiral can be seen in the shape of the human cochlea and the spiral galaxy; The fragmented geometry of the veins resonated in the branch of electricity.
In a new pilot study, astrophysicists and neurosurgeons have explored it using quantitative analysis to compare nature’s two most complex systems: the neuronal network in the human brain and the cosmic network of galaxies in the universe.
It’s not really that comparable. You may have seen an image that is occasionally split around, showing human neurons and a virtual galaxy cluster, side-by-side; The two look surprisingly similar.
(Mark Miller / Virgo Consortium / Visual Complexity)
But the human brain – and the universe – is much more than what it looks like.
So astronomist Franco Vaza of the University of Bologna in Italy and neurosurgeon Alberto Felletti of the University of Verona in Italy have examined the last few years to determine whether the similarities are greater than skin-deep.
Writing in Nautilus Quarterly in 2017, he explained:
“Galaxies can group into massive formations (clusters, superclusters, and filaments) spanning millions of light-years. The boundaries between these structures and the neighboring strips of space known as cosmic voids can be extremely complex.
Gravity accelerates objects at speeds of thousands of kilometers per second at these boundaries, creating shock waves and disturbing interstellar gases.
We have predicted that the void-filament boundary is one of the most complex parts of the universe, measured by the number of bits of information it takes to describe it.
This made us think: is it more complex than the brain? “
The two types of structures differ in size from the order of 27 intensities (they are one billion). But the team’s results suggest that, while the physiological processes that accelerate the formation of the universe and the formation of the human brain can lead to similar levels of complexity and self-organization, the researchers said.
The starting point was the similarities between the two. The human cerebellum contains approximately 69 billion neurons; The observable cosmic web contains more than 100 billion galaxies. It’s one.
Both systems are arranged in well-defined networks, with nodes connected by filaments (neurons in the brain, galaxies in the universe).
Both neurons and galaxies have a typical scale radius that is only a fraction of the length of the filament. And the flow of information and energy between nodes is only 25 percent of the mass and energy content of each system.
In addition, there are similarities between the structure of the brain and the structure of the universe. The brain is about 77 percent water. About 72 percent of the universe is dark energy.
Both of these are apparently passive materials that propagate their respective systems and play only an indirect role in their internal structure.
With this similarity defined, the team conducted a quantitative comparison of the two based on the following images. They obtained fragments of the human cerebellum and cortex at various specifications, and compared them with simulations of the cosmic web.
What they were looking for was a similarity in density fluctuations in matter between the brain and the cosmic web. And they found that the relative distribution of fluctuations between the two systems was surprisingly similar – albeit on many scales.
40x magnification (left) and a piece of cerebellum on one side (right) of 300 light-years on the cerebellum cosmic web. (University of Bologna)
“We calculated the spectral density of both systems. This is a technique often employed in cosmology to study the spatial distribution of galaxies,” Vazza said.
“Our analysis shows that the distribution of fluctuations on a scale of 1 micrometer to 0.1 millimeters within the cerebellum neuronal network follows a similar progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web, but, of course, on a large scale which increases from 5 million to 500 million light-years.”
But that was not all.
The team looked at other morphological features, such as the number of filaments attached to each node. The Cosmic Web, based on a sample of 3,800 to 4,700 nodes, has an average of 3.8 to 4.1 connections per node. The human cortex, for a sample of 1,800 to 2,000 nodes, had an average of 4.6 to 5.4 connections per node.
In addition, both systems exhibited a tendency to cluster connections around central nodes. And both seem to have the same information capacity.
A recent study suggests that the human brain’s memory is about 2.5 petabytes. Another recent study by Waza suggests that the memory capacity required to store the complexity of the universe is about 3.3 petabytes.
The researchers wrote in 2017 that, “speaking easily,” this similarity in memory capacity means that the entire body of information that is stored in the human brain (e.g., a person’s entire life experience) can also be encoded in distribution. Of the galaxies in our universe. “
This is not to say that the universe is a brain, or capable of sensation. But it does indicate that the laws that govern the development of both constitutions may be the same.
According to a 2012 paper based on simulations, the causal network representing the vast formation of space-time in our accelerated universe is a power-law graph remarkably similar to the human brain.
A study like this by Waza and Felletti could pave the way for a better understanding of those laws.
“Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected contractual levels. Presumably, despite the striking and obvious differences between the physical forces that regulate galaxies and neurons, the connection between the two networks develops following the same physical principles.”
“These two complex networks show more similarities than shared between the cosmic web and the galaxy or within the neuronal network and the neuronal body.”
Research has been published in Frontiers in Physics.
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