"However, by using innovative methods to measure the electrical impulses of lab-grown brain tissue, Sharf and the study's authors discovered compelling evidence that the brain is already encoded with instructions for making sense of the world even before it receives any sensory input, which he said is more akin to the philosopher Immanuel Kant's idea of a priori cognition, and which Sharf calls a primordial operating system."
"Sharf holds a CMOS-based microelectrode array chip, which contains thousands of miniaturized amplifiers used to triangulate the electrical activity of single neurons within millimeter-sized organoid tissue. (Credit Carolyn Lagattuta) It's been hard for the neuroscience community to take a step back from this old school interpretation that the brain is this blank slate, said Sharf. Our work suggests that an intrinsic physiologic scaffold forms early in brain development and provides the foundational structure for encoding information."
Developing human and rodent brain tissue exhibits spontaneous electrical activity and organized temporal firing sequences without sensory input. Intrinsic neuronal firing sequences arise independently of experience, indicating preconfigured temporal patterns. A CMOS-based microelectrode array with thousands of miniaturized amplifiers triangulated single-neuron electrical activity in millimeter-sized organoid tissue. An intrinsic physiologic scaffold forms early in development and provides foundational structure for encoding information. The emerging network architecture resembles a primordial operating system that primes the brain to interpret physical experience. This prewiring challenges the blank-slate notion and implies innate computational frameworks guide later sensory-driven learning.
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