(Image Credit: UCL)
Instead of acting typically as simple wiring as once believed, tiny microscopic brain cell branches might actually serve as mini computers, researchers say.
The brain is the most powerful computer known to man, possessing about 100 billion neurons with roughly 100 quadrillion connections known as synapses wiring everything together.
Neuron act as a relay station for the electrical signals. The heart of each neuron, known as a soma, is a single, thin, cable like fiber called the axon and carries nerve signals away from the neuron, and shorter branches called dendrites carry the signals to the neuron.
Scientists now, however, find that dendrites may have more of a role than just simple passive wiring, and may actually process information.
“Suddenly, it’s as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought,” Spencer Smith, a neuroscientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a statement.
Check out the intriguing read here at Live Science for more information.
