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, researchers have found signs that these brain structures reach or come close to reaching "criticality," wherein the neurons are perpetually phasing between two different states of matter, and can't be pinned down as exclusively being either one of them.
What these two states are remains unknown. But the findings illustrate the complexities of our brain's internal mechanisms, and provide an avenue for explaining how our mushy, unassuming gray matter can play host to something as intricate as— while also hinting that human brains may have more in common with brains of less complex creatures than once believed.
When examining publicly available data of 3D reconstructions of human, fruit fly, and mouse brains, the researchers, who took a statistical physics approach, observed these repeating fractal patterns in neurons, but they also found that the sizes of the neuron segments varied significantly. This dichotomy of being ordered yet diverse, they concluded, are strong signs of matter approaching a critical point.
What's just as compelling is that the researchers found these signs of criticality in fruit fly and mouse brains, too — and not just human ones — even though they have little else in common.
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