Cytoskeletal Filaments Deep Inside a Neuron Are not Silent: They Regulate the Precise Timing of Nerve Spikes Using a Pair of Vortices

Abstract

Hodgkin and Huxley showed that even if the filaments are dissolved, a neuron’s membrane alone can generate and transmit the nerve spike. Regulating the time gap between spikes is key to the brain’s cognitive function; however, the time modulation mechanism is still a mystery. By inserting a coaxial probe deep inside a neuron, we repeatedly show that the filaments transmit electromagnetic signals of ~200 μs before an ionic nerve spike sets in. To understand its origin, here, we mapped the electromagnetic vortex produced by a filamentary bundle deep inside a neuron, regulating the nerve spike’s electrical-ionic vortex. We used monochromatic polarized light to measure the transmitted signals beating from the internal components of a cultured neuron. A nerve spike is a 3D ring of the electric field encompassing the perimeter of a neural branch. Several such vortices flow sequentially to keep precise timing for the brain’s cognition. The filaments hold millisecond order time gaps between membrane spikes with microsecond order signaling of electromagnetic vortices. Dielectric resonance images revealed that ordered filaments inside neural branches instruct the ordered grid-like network of actin–beta-spectrin just below the membrane. That layer builds a pair of electric field vortices, which coherently activates all ion-channels in a circular area of the membrane lipid bilayer when a nerve spike propagates. When biomaterials vibrate resonantly with microwave and radio-wave, simultaneous quantum optics capture ultra-fast events in a non-demolition mode, revealing multiple correlated time-domain operations beyond the Hodgkin–Huxley paradigm. Neuron holograms pave the way to understanding the filamentary circuits of a neural network in addition to membrane circuits.

Towards Generalizing the Information Theory for Neural Communication

“…Given that the internal operation of the neuron membrane needs time (the neuron membrane is not isopotential [ 36 , 37 ]), the result of a neural computation depends not only on its inputs but also on the neuron’s internal state (a spike arriving during the relative refractory period finds a membrane potential above the resting level, leading to spike generation at an earlier time). One can easily interpret the effect using the temporal behavior [ 38 ], seen experimentally as nonlinear summing of synaptic inputs [ 34 ]: the changed time of charge arrival (due to changes in the presynaptic spiking time, conduction velocity, and synapse’s joining location).…”

“…The neuronal condenser’s control unit can select how much from the (time-dependent) input density functions (currents), it integrates into the actual measurement. When the membrane reaches its threshold potential, the receiver neuron closes its input channels and starts to prepare [ 37 ] its spike. The result of the computation, a single output spike, may be issued when neither of the input spikes was entirely delivered .…”

Quantum Neurobiology

“…Neurofilamentary dynamics likewise have a role in axonal signaling. Research finds that the axon processes information at multiple time scales [106,107] in the shape of vortex-like signals that can be captured with quantum optics [108]. An axon has thousands of densely packed neurofilaments beneath the membrane.…”

“…Specifically, four ordered structures in the cytoskeletal filaments were shown to exchange energy approximately 250 microseconds before a neuron fires [107]. The research program integrates multiple time domains into a single temporal architecture, extending the traditional Hodgkin-Huxley model used to study neural signaling, branch selection, spike time-gap regulation, and synaptic plasticity [108]. Understanding filamen-tary dynamics is important as these proteins are proposed as a blood-based biomarker of neurodegenerative pathology, overcoming some of the challenges of amyloid-beta and tau proteins as the traditional diagnostic markers for Alzheimer's disease [109].…”

The archetypal molecular patterns of conscious experience are quantum analogs

“…However, the electric and magnetic fields may still be decoupled, even though the fields have a time-dependent variation. Due to the generalized Ampere's law accounting for a displacement field, a time-varying electric field in a biomaterial will give rise to a time-varying magnetic field and vice versa (due to Faraday's law) over a space in the biological organ [13]. The spatiotemporal magnetic fields flowing in a loop are similar to quasi-particles.…”