The Dark Energy of Your Brain

Do you ever wonder what is going on inside your brain when you are at rest? Consciously, you are not aware of anything. Up until a few years ago, it was generally accepted that your brain in rest is actually doing nothing. However, this may not be the case. As far back as 1929, Hans Berger the inventor of the electroencephalogram noticed background electrical activity in the subject's brain while at rest. He hypothesized the human brain was constantly working even in a state of rest.

With today's non-invasive technology of fMRI(don't ask how fMRI works, I'll leave that to another post) and PET scans, scientists are starting to look into the inner workings of your BRAIN. In fact, for the past 20 years since these technologies have been available, scientists have largely ignored this background noise. Recently, neuroscientists started investigating this noise in the brain and have discovered the brain is doing a lot more than initially was expected.

When scientists looked a little closer at subjects at rest, they discovered the brain isn't really shut off. In fact, energy consumption in the brain only decreased by around 5% when at rest. So what exactly is the brain doing while at rest? Apparently, quite a lot. When you think of the information streaming into your brain, there's quite a bit of filtering, directing, retrieving, and reacting to inside and outside stimuli. To see, your eye receives about 10 billion bits per second, six million leave the retina, and 10,000 bits make it to your visual cortex and 100 bits are actually perceived.

Scientists have indentified neural networks in the brain that are constantly sifting through a massive amounts of data every second, prioritizing what data requires our conscious attention from both internal and external activities, and determining whether a reaction is warranted. Not much is known on these neural networks, but they make up a large part of energy expended within the brain, comparable to the dark energy that makes up a large part on the universe' mass.

For example, think of a time when you are sitting in a long boring meeting not really engaged in anything specific. Then, a mosquito quickly approaches your audible range. Depending on how far it is, you are probably not aware of it. However, your ear is picking up the sound, relaying it to your brain. Your brain is constantly monitoring the whining of the mosquito wings. For the initial part, it wouldn't really register in your consciousness, because there are other stimuli that have garnered your attention, such as the new intern whose oozing sex pheromones. The gentle waft of pheromones is picked up the olfactory part of your brain. Because pro-creation is a priority, your brain gives it priority, suppressing all other outside stimuli. Consciously, what do you do with this information, probably nothing, because copulation during a work meeting is culturally not acceptable. Priority of copulation is downgraded.

However, the mosquito approaches. Your brain has determined that mosquito should be given priority over the oozing intern. So, now you become aware of the whining noise of an approaching mosquito. These neural networks are constantly shuttling information back and forth between the different areas of the brain constantly monitoring the approaching mosquito. Finally, the skin in the ear sense a slight change in air pressure from the beating wings of the mosquito, on top of the loud buzzing being picked up by our ears. The brain immediately sends a message to your arms to swat the bugger. It is interesting to note on brain scans, that specific areas of the brain light up to initiate the swatting of a mosquito before you become conscious of taking such an action.

The implication of these findings is that these default mode neural networks may be our consciousness. The benefits of more research in this area are new treatments for Alzheimer, schizophrenia, and depression. A darker implication for this research, is the ability to program people, by hardwiring the brain to react to very specific stimuli above all else. Could we end up genetically altering human consciousness or even removing free will? An even more fundamental question that this research raises is -Does free will even exist?

As with all things science, the possibilities and questions are endless. What we end up doing with such discoveries and technologies will shape future societies for better or worse. Below is a link to the article.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-brains-dark-energy