When neurons do what they’re supposed to, they create the natural wonder that is the human mind. But when they go wrong for some reason, they fail as data processing, memory-storing units in your brain just like a failed hard drive sector.
In this video, a neuron lacks the protein needed to make connections with other cells, essentially becoming a bad sector.
While the neuron on the left looks undeniably sinister, those tendrils extending from it actually signal its healed—they are the neural connections vital to its data-transmitting task. The one on the right, however, fails to make the connections. Whether it’s data stored in your dome or on your drive that you’re concerned about losing—well, you’re right to be.
There’s really nothing more fascinating than watching neurons develop – they are the building blocks of thought in your brain, and in this video you can see fetal neurons developing, growing connections between one another. In a brain, those connections could literally form thought-associations and memories.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Georgia Tech released a brand-new video of neurons firing. Electrical signals hop from one neuron to the next, lighting up each cell as the signals move. When neuroscientists do fMRI images of brains, they are looking to see which parts of the brain have become engorged with blood, because those are also the areas with the greatest electrical activity. EEGs look directly for electrical signals. Looking for electrical activity in the brain has allowed scientists to figure out where we process information related to memory, facial recognition, desire, and many other things.
