“Cytoelectric coupling”: a groundbreaking hypothesis about how our brains work

Brain waves act as carriers of information. A recently proposed “cytoelectric coupling” hypothesis suggests that these oscillating electric fields contribute to optimizing the efficiency and robustness of the brain network. They do this by influencing the physical makeup of the brain’s molecular framework.

To carry out its multifaceted functions, which include thinking, the brain operates on several levels. Information such as targets or images is represented through synchronized electrical activity between neural networks. Simultaneously, a combination of proteins and other biochemicals in and around each neuron physically executes the mechanics required to participate in these networks.

A new article from researchers at WITH, City University of Londonand Johns Hopkins University postulates that the electrical fields of the network influence the physical configuration of the subcellular components of neurons to optimize the stability and efficiency of the network, a hypothesis that the authors refer to as “cytoelectric coupling”.

Earl K. Miller gives a talk on his recent work at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Credit: MIT Picower Institute

“The information that the brain processes has a role in fine-tuning the network down to the molecular level,” said Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in WITHwho co-authored the Progress in Neurobiology paper with Associate Professor Dimitris Pinotsis of MIT and City —University of London, and Johns Hopkins Professor Gene Fridman.

“The brain adapts to a changing world,” Pinotsis said. “Their proteins and molecules also change. They can carry electrical charges and need to catch up with neurons that process, store, and transmit information using electrical signals. Interacting with the electrical fields of neurons seems necessary”.

thinking in fields

A primary focus of the Miller lab is studying how high-level cognitive functions, such as working memory, can emerge quickly, flexibly, and reliably from the activity of millions of individual neurons. Neurons are capable of dynamically forming circuits by creating and removing connections, called synapses, as well as by strengthening or weakening those junctions. But that simply forms a “road map” around which information could flow, Miller said.

Miller discovered that specific neural circuits that collectively represent one thought or another are coordinated by rhythmic activity, more colloquially known as “brain waves” of different frequencies.

Fast “gamma” rhythms help transmit images of our vision (eg, a muffin), while slower “beta” waves can transmit our deepest thoughts about that image (eg, “too many calories”. ”). At the right time, bursts of these waves can carry predictions, allow information to be written, retained, and read on work memoryMiller’s lab has shown.

They break down when working memory does too. The lab has reported evidence that the brain could clearly manipulate rhythms at specific physical locations to further organize neurons for flexible cognition, a concept called “Space Computing.”

Other recent work from the lab has shown that while the participation of individual neurons within networks can be fickle and unreliable, the information carried by the networks of which they are a part is stably represented by the whole. electric fields generated by their collective activity.

cytoelectric coupling

In the new study, the authors combine this model of rhythmic electrical activity that coordinates neural networks with other lines of evidence that electrical fields can influence neurons at the molecular level.

Researchers, for example, have studied ephaptic coupling, in which neurons influence each other’s electrical properties through the proximity of their membranes, rather than relying solely on electrochemical exchanges across synapses. This electrical crosstalk can affect neural functions, including when and if spike transmit electrical signals to other neurons in a circuit.

Miller, Pinotsis, and Fridman also cite research showing other electrical influences on cells and their components, including how neural development is guided by fields and that microtubules can be aligned by them.

If the brain carries information in electrical fields, and those electrical fields are capable of configuring neurons and other elements in the brain that form a network, then it is likely that the brain uses this capability. The brain can use fields to ensure that the network does what it’s supposed to do, the authors suggest.

To put it (loosely) in couch potato terms, the success of a TV network isn’t just its ability to deliver a clear signal to millions of homes. What’s also important are details as fine as how each viewer’s household arranges their television, sound system, and living room furniture to maximize the experience. In both this metaphor and the brain, Miller said, the presence of the network motivates individual participants to configure their own infrastructure to participate optimally.

“Cytoelectric docking connects information at the meso and macroscopic level to the microscopic level of proteins that are the molecular basis of memory,” the authors wrote in the article.

The article exposes the logic behind Cytoelectric Coupling. “We are offering a hypothesis that anyone can test,” Miller said.

Reference: “Cytoelectric Coupling: Electrical Fields Sculpt Neuronal Activity and ‘Fine Tune’ the Brain’s Infrastructure” by Dimitris A. Pinotsis, Gene Fridman, and Earl K. Miller, May 18, 2023, Advances in Neurobiology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neumobio.2023.102465

The study was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the US Office of Naval Research, the JPB Foundation and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.