Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Let's get critical!


Since there's currently a KITP program-in-progress on the anatomy, development and evolution on the brain, I thought I'd post a few links on some recently reported brainy news.

* First, there's an article in Nature on "Noise in the Nervous System," by a group of Cambridge University scientists. Science writer Carl Zimmer (who also blogs at The Loom) gives a nice rundown of the work in Wired.

* Second, the pseudonym-y KFC at the arXiv blog writes about an intriguing new paper posted at arXiv by researchers at Northwestern University: "The Brain: What is Critical About It?" The basic hypothesis is that the "brain is spontaneously posed at the border of a second-order phase transition, just like the transition a ferromagnetic material undergoes as it switches from a nonmagnetic phase." KFC points out that this is a cool-sounding idea that probably needs some additional development/supporting experimental evidence. But it's a nice example of physics and neuroscience working together at the cutting edge.

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