The Human Brain Can Create Structures in Up to 11 Dimensions

Very interesting article and research.

These are not spacetime dimensions but dimensions associated with consciousness. This is remarkable and the question has to be asked why 11 dimensions? We experience the universe in 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time.

Could it be that at some point in the past, our ancestors had access to higher dimensions and therefore higher dimensional consciousness?

Last year, neuroscientists used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains.

What they discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.

We're used to thinking of the world from a 3-D perspective, so this may sound a bit tricky, but the results of this study could be the next major step in understanding the fabric of the human brain - the most complex structure we know of.

The team used algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics used to describe the properties of objects and spaces regardless of how they change shape.

They found that groups of neurons connect into 'cliques', and that the number of neurons in a clique would lead to its size as a high-dimensional geometric object (a mathematical dimensional concept, not a space-time one).

www.sciencealert.com...

Think about the story of Adam and Eve. In the Garden they could eat off of any tree even the tree of life. So within God's Will they had more freedom. The one act that was outside of God's Will led to sin, death, disease and short lifespans. Before the fall they may have had access to these higher dimensions.

When you look at atheist and materialist, they're thinking is limited to 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time. We know through the Bible and through science that we have a limited perception of time. We see time from moment to moment within a single reference frame.

The Bible tells us that God is outside of our perception of time. Einstein said,"The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

It always amazes me that atheist are so incurious about these things. Our whole life depends on the distinction between past, present and future. When we're born, when we go to work, when we go on vacation or eat dinner. Einstein is saying this distinction is an illusion, why wouldn't you want to know why?

Why are we confined to this limited perception of time? Could it be the result of the fall of Adam and Eve and when this happened they went from having access to all of these higher dimensions to being reduced to just 3 dimensions?

The Bible tells us to think outside of 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time. Jesus said My Kingdom is not of this world, God is outside our perception of time, Paul went up to the Third Heaven, the Bible talked about everlasting to everlasting before science discovered infinities within infinities and the Bible talks about the Heavens of Heaven and the Highest Heavens.

Let me repeat that:

The Bible tells us to think outside of 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time. Jesus said My Kingdom is not of this world, God is outside our perception of time, Paul went up to the Third Heaven, the Bible talked about everlasting to everlasting before science discovered infinities within infinities and the Bible talks about the Heavens of Heaven and the Highest Heavens.

Back to the article:

"We found a world that we had never imagined," said lead researcher, neuroscientist Henry Markram from the EPFL institute in Switzerland.

"There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to 11 dimensions."

Just to be clear - this isn't how you'd think of spatial dimensions (our Universe has three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension), instead it refers to how the researchers have looked at the neuron cliques to determine how connected they are.

"Networks are often analysed in terms of groups of nodes that are all-to-all connected, known as cliques. The number of neurons in a clique determines its size, or more formally, its dimension," the researchers explained in the paper.

To perform the mathematical tests, the team used a detailed model of the neocortex the Blue Brain Project team published back in 2015.

The neocortex is thought to be the most recently evolved part of our brains, and the one involved in some of our higher-order functions like cognition and sensory perception.

By connecting these two levels, the researchers could discern high-dimensional geometric structures in the brain, formed by collections of tightly connected neurons (cliques) and the empty spaces (cavities) between them.

"We found a remarkably high number and variety of high-dimensional directed cliques and cavities, which had not been seen before in neural networks, either biological or artificial," the team wrote in the study.

"It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building [and] then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc," said one of the team, mathematician Ran Levi from Aberdeen University in Scotland.

www.sciencealert.com...

Think about that! Our brain still has access to these higher brain functions associated with these higher dimensional structures but because of the fall, we're "physically" confined to 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time.

It doesn't stop there!

Here's an article about the research of a Neurosurgeon and Astrophysicist that looked into the similarities of the human brain and the cosmic web of the universe that connects galaxies.

How the Universe resembles a human brain A new study found similarities between the human brain and the cosmic network of galaxies.

A new study finds similarities between the structures and processes of the human brain and the cosmic web. The research was carried out by an astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon. The two systems are vastly different in size but resemble each other in several key areas.

Scientists found similarities in the workings of two systems completely different in scale – the network of neuronal cells in the human brain and the cosmic web of galaxies.

Researchers studied the two systems from a variety of angles, looking at structure, morphology, memory capacity, and other properties. Their quantitative analysis revealed that very dissimilar physical processes can create structures sharing levels of complexity and organization, even if they are varied in size by 27 orders of magnitude.

The unusual study was itself carried out by Italian specialists in two very different fields – astrophysicist Franco Vazza from the University of Bologna and neurosurgeon Alberto Feletti from the University of Verona.

bigthink.com...

This connects to the earlier research and I will explain how but first check out these pictures.



The research looks into even more intersting connections.

This shouldn't be surprising. As thoughts flow through our brain these neuron networks form. (CONT'D)

We're made in the image and likeness of God. The Bible says God Created the worlds through His Word that became flesh which is Jesus Christ, so the thoughts of God flow through the universe. So similar neuron connections form in the universe that bring the harmony, order and mathematical precision scientist discover.

A research project based on the earlier research would be to use algebraic topology and look at the cosmic web of the universe to see if these same higher dimensional structures that form in the brain form in the universe.

That would be amazing to see. Just think, you would be seeing thoughts flow through the universe as these higher dimensional structures form then disintegrate. You also have more scientist looking into the area of consciousness flowing through the universe.

Can our brains help prove the universe is conscious?
www.space.com...

Is the universe conscious? It seems impossible until you do the maths
link

Is the Universe Conscious?
Some of the world's most renowned scientists are questioning whether the cosmos has an inner life similar to our own.
www.nbcnews.com...

Some Scientists Believe the Universe Is Conscious
www.popularmechanics.com...

I will end with a quote from Nobel Prize Winner Max Planck.

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”

a reply to: neoholographic

Our ancestors were more evolved.

If you look at evolution from the correct perspective, on how well an organism thrives in its environment.

What we have now.. i dont know what else to call it but a perversion.

Also mushrooms. They have lots to say about our brains.

Amazing. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but when I was interviewed for a job to sell unbuilt homes, one of my tests consisted of finding a piece of land and drawing the house out in my head, inside and out. It was supposed to test my 4th dimension frame of thought. I was also asked how my morning would begin if I were to wake up in a space station orbiting Saturn. But if what I had to do for 4th dimension was a bit challenging, I'd hate to see what 11th dimension consisted of.

This article is generating total confusion in its readers because it oscillates (on purpose, I believe) between what a physicist or mathematician understands as a "dimension" of space and the author's misleading use of the same word to quantify numbers of neurons. And it is just to create a wave of interest among those wanting to find scientific support for their loose association of this word with higher realities, which have NOTHING to do with higher spatial dimensions. For the record, quantum mechanics predicts space-time is 26-d as far as bosonic (spinless) strings are concerned, whilst M-theory, which includes superstring theory, requires space to have 10 dimensions (three large-scale, seven microscopic). So theoretical physics research findings in string and brane theory do NOT support anything existing in up to 11 spatial dimensions. If they are fermions, they can occupy only 9 spatial dimensions; if they are bosons lacking supersymmetry, they can occupy 25 spatial dimensions - 16 more than superstrings. Period. The reason for this DOES has connections with mystical traditions like Kabbalah. If you want to learn more, then study the research at
www.smphillips,mysite.com
instead of listening to loose talk from some researchers wanting to attract wider attention to their work by presenting it in a way that dupes eveyone into thinking their work supports the notion of higher, spiritual realms. It doesn't!

originally posted by: LSU2018
Amazing. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but when I was interviewed for a job to sell unbuilt homes, one of my tests consisted of finding a piece of land and drawing the house out in my head, inside and out. It was supposed to test my 4th dimension frame of thought. I was also asked how my morning would begin if I were to wake up in a space station orbiting Saturn. But if what I had to do for 4th dimension was a bit challenging, I'd hate to see what 11th dimension consisted of.

Interesting. Our frame of thought can think about these higher dimensions but what we call "physical" limits us to just 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time.

a reply to: neoholographic

Like said before, hallucinogenic drugs can widen your perspective!

Ever been to Flatland??

Try salvia (or watch Miley Cirus freak out on the same via u-tube!).

RAW and Leary (and a bunch of psychonauts), have attested to the limitations of our human minds (do some read on “flying reindeer” and the original color of Santa Claus to gain some insight into the role of hallucinogens upon or world view. Heck, some believe that Jesus (and the Essenes) were a mushroom cult! As in, “Eat of this for it is my body….”)

You, of all people, who is a champion of quantum computers, should know that the brain has a light component to it which makes it quantum by nature!

Add hallucinogenic substances to that and to think we are “limited” to three physical dimensions and one of time is offensive!!

Once again, we are trying to explain and understand ourselves within Universe. And math and physics has the Godel self described/consistent limitation upon it, then you should realize that our minds are quantum in nature , and that can be attributed to the fact that it (our brains) make light which is faster than the potassium and calcium ions waving along our dendrites!!

That is something that nobody has addressed in AI because they don’t even get how the ion transport in our brains creates memory and thoughts let alone consciousness!!

11 dimensions… doesn’t surprise me. But that means that you have a “string theory” fight on your hands!!

At which point I walk away….

Thanks as always for making me think! And it is not personal or anything but a point of philosophy that I come from!

And I can always be dead ass wrong in my own delusion!!

When I was younger, I used to be able to assemble an engine in my head and turn it over, then also rev it up to watch how it worked. I used to practice designing different engine structures in my head and run them. Most of those engines did not work right in my mind for various reasons. Being able to picture things and mobilize them in my head made it easy to do things and diagnose mechanical things. But around twenty years ago I bumped my head on the cage of a forklift and I lost some of that and the ability to do complex math problems in my head faster than someone could with a calculator. Then I got the temporal lobe head injury a couple of years later from getting rearended at a stop light, and most of what I left could not work right...having something and losing it makes things frustrating. I did get some of it back over the last fifteen years but not all of it....in fact, I am just about the same as the normal population with this kind of stuff now, I lost something that most people don't have. My brother also has this high mechanical aptitude, and his still works

These are measurements outside of geometry (ie. the point, line, plane, cube, hyper cube, etc). Instead they seem to be measuring the complexity of neural connections in the brain and using the term dimensions to describe what they have found.

Just to be clear - this isn't how you'd think of spatial dimensions (our Universe has three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension), instead it refers to how the researchers have looked at the neuron cliques to determine how connected they are.

So nothing more than scientific jargon unrelated to the extra dimensional geometry beyond the 4th dimension. It is probably exponential, 1 neuron connected to 2, then 4, then 8 and so on, each being described as a dimension (just my own thoughts here).

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Wrong.

It's exactly about geometric shapes forming cliques of neurons with higher dimensional shapes. This is algebraic topology which deals in higher dimensional shapes and how shapes can change into different geometric shapes. Here's some pics and video.







Here's a video:



This is from the article:

Those clearings or cavities seem to be critically important for brain function. When researchers gave their virtual brain tissue a stimulus, they saw that neurons were reacting to it in a highly organised manner.

"It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building [and] then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc," said one of the team, mathematician Ran Levi from Aberdeen University in Scotland.
www.sciencealert.com...

So of course they're dealing with geometric shapes which makes this even more profound because our brains have access to these higher dimensions while "physically" we're limited to 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time.

a reply to: neoholographic

Cool, glad to be wrong. The illustrations are nice.

a reply to: neoholographic

I'm sorry but your source specifically says these 11 dimensions are NOT in the realm of space-time dimensions, so your references to accessing higher dimensions, or stepping outside of time as we know it, are irrelevant to the topic. They are talking about the complexity of neural connections, and mathematical dimensions used to describe them (a structural description) not dimensions of space and/or time.

From your source:

Just to be clear - this isn't how you'd think of spatial dimensions (our Universe has three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension), instead it refers to how the researchers have looked at the neuron cliques to determine how connected they are.

a reply to: new_here

I figured there would be people who keep repeating the same thing from the article and this is why I said this in the first paragraph of the OP.

These are not spacetime dimensions but dimensions associated with consciousness. This is remarkable and the question has to be asked why 11 dimensions? We experience the universe in 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time.

While I was typing this thread I said watch, the people who can't debate or accept what the article is saying will continue talking about spacetime dimensions instead of debating the actual research.

Like I said, it's even more profound because higher dimensions aren't just about spacetime, they're geometries. Do you understand that the geometry of higher dimensions is about math and things like algebraic topology? Did you even bother to watch the video or look at the pictures of higher dimensional cliques? In General Relativity it's about spacetime GEOMETRY. Geometry doesn't just apply to spacetime.

Einstein's Genius: Describing the Geometry of Space-Time

The absolute core of general relativity, and a perfectly acceptable alternative name for it, is geometrodynamics. Go ahead, say it out loud — it's fun. The way that general relativity models gravity is through the dynamic machinations of space-time itself. According to the theory, the presence of matter and energy alters the fundamental space-time geometry surrounding those substances, and that altered geometry influences motion.

www.space.com...

You do know Geometry existed before Einstein?

The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to early peoples, such as the ancient Indus Valley (see Harappan mathematics) and ancient Babylonia (see Babylonian mathematics) from around 3000 BC.
en.wikipedia.org...

The Foundations for algebraic topology started in 1895.

This chapter focuses the history on the emergence of the ideas leading to new areas of study in algebraic topology and conveys the contributions of some mathematicians who introduced new concepts or proved theorems of fundamental importance or inaugurated new theories in algebraic topology starting from the creation of homotopy, fundamental group, and homology group by H. Poincaré (1854–1912) in 1895, which are the first most profound and far reaching inventions in algebraic topology.
link

Einstein was around 14.

I knew people wouldn't debate the research but try to focus on spacetime dimensions.

The research is even more fascinating. What it shows is that these cliques of neurons form these higher dimensional shapes connected to brain functions. Why, when we live in 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time? Could it be that the first humans had access to higher dimensions of space and because of the fall we're trapped and limted to 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time "physically?"

Let me post the pic of the brain again.



Look at how cliques of neurons form different dimensional shapes associated with brain functions. Fascinating study that needs to be researched more when it comes to the brain as well as doing algebraic topolgy on the cosmic web to see if these higher dimensional shapes form in the cosmic web.



So please, no more questions about spacetime dimensions as it relates to the research. This is about geometry and topology. Geometry has been around since B.C. dates.

Ancient Egyptians used geometry principles as far back as 3000 BC, using equations to approximate the area of circles among other formulas.

Babylonians measured the circumference of a circle as approximately 3 times the diameter, which is fairly close to today’s measurement which uses the value of Pi (around 3.14).

A Greek mathematician named Euclid who lived around the year 300 BC is often referred to as the ‘Father of Geometry’ for his amazing geometry works that included the influential ‘Elements’, which remained the main textbook for teaching mathematics until around the early 20th century.

Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras lived around the year 500 BC and is known for his Pythagorean theorem relating to the three sides of a right angle triangle: a² + b² = c²

Archimedes of Syracuse lived around the year 250 BC and played a large role in the history of geometry including a method for determining the volume of objects with irregular shapes.
www.mathnasium.com...

Fascinating research!

Before the fall, Adam and Eve may have had access to higher dimensions and therefore these higher dimensional structures formed in the brain. After the fall, we were confined to 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time but our brains still have access to these higher dimensional brain functions that could even be connected to higher states of consciousness.

In conclusion, this study suggests that neocortical microcircuits process information through a stereotypical progression of clique and cavity formation and disintegration, consistent with a recent hypothesis of common strategies for information processing across the neocortex (Harris and Shepherd, 2015). We conjecture that a stimulus may be processed by binding neurons into cliques of increasingly higher dimension, as a specific class of cell assemblies, possibly to represent features of the stimulus(Hebb, 1949; Braitenberg, 1978), and by binding these cliques into cavities of increasing complexity, possibly to represent the associations between the features (Willshaw et al., 1969; Engel and Singer, 2001; Knoblauch et al., 2009).

www.frontiersin.org...

The entire experiment demonstrates the natural, biological process of self assembly. No magic wand or supernatural component required. It's an evolutionary trail of events leading to more complex systems. The comparison of networks is an excellent example of evolutionary networks which is an on going process.

No magic wand required.

a reply to: neoholographic

I read the article about the similarities between the human brain and the universe and it would be interesting to see if the universe forms these higher dimensional shapes.

originally posted by: neoholographic

While I was typing this thread I said watch, the people who can't debate or accept what the article is saying will continue talking about spacetime dimensions instead of debating the actual research.

Because exploring higher dimensions of thought and awakening the cosmic conscious within is not "research" as you put it, it is more akin to a religious practice or a pseudoscience and at best metaphysical.

So please, no more questions about spacetime dimensions as it relates to the research. This is about geometry and topology. Geometry has been around since B.C. dates.

I think you're just in the wrong section, this is the science and technology forum.

I think you got ripped off by whoever sold this to you as science, you probably want to get a refund.

a reply to: Romeopsi

Let's all pound down a few fat lines of some ass kicking c0caine and listen to Max Tegmark.

/sniff sniff... tee hee heekumbaya brother.

originally posted by: Romeopsi
a reply to: neoholographic

I read the article about the similarities between the human brain and the universe and it would be interesting to see if the universe forms these higher dimensional shapes.

In my mind consciousness is a separate construct from the body/mind and I can't help feelz that we are part and parcel of spacetime and connected and constructed in the same way. Everything we know/explore is theory as the reality is veiled. Then we have quantum mechanics at the forefront of new theorizing our perceived and unperceived realities.

So my apologies to the OP in not remaining in topographical geometry but algebraic math is just a stepping stone to the truth.

I offer this TED talk which I'd like to share with all of you because it's fun to explore different theories and some things in science are just blown over because it doesn't fit the narrative.