God's Tiny Reflection: Quantum Bias

Computer scientists use the model of unidirectional brain activity to create computational strategies based on the simple interpretation of how a cell decides whether or not to fire its axon. The algorithm uses multiple, analog, biased inputs to determine a single, digital, monotone output. Each input is assigned a bias or importance that changes throughout time as experience refines its overall impact. This happens through the recursive pruning and expansion of a dynamic decision-tree's limbs. It is a fractal growth that bends towards the increasing value of its output. A few important or highly biased dendrites can fire the axon while it takes many more with a lower bias to coax emission -- the quantum event.

How the biological cell determines the bias and firing patterns associated with its individual network is a mystery. There are about a hundred-billion neurons and a hundred-trillion connections (more than the stars in our galaxy). With this much complexity, how is a brain anything but a big box of noise? Why would a single neuron decide to fire? How does a sole voice count in a cacophony of others? It seems so random but functions much like a democratic poll; the brain signals the body to act when relative networks exhibit the required activity, in other words, reach the tipping-point; the little guys dance with enough enthusiasm to raise the roof. Unlike a democracy, not every vote is counted the same. Like a kleptocracy, an important few can make all the difference. Stars often steal the show, blowing that roof right off the walls.

However a cell determines whether it will fire or not happens inside the cell where a dense mesh of microtubules holds the architecture of the cell together. For some time, this was the sole function assigned to the stuff. Now we know it plays a role in the firing of the axon. This substance is like the bones of a body except there are many more microtubules in a cell than bones in a body. This essential component of the system is linked with neurodegenerative diseases. How these fibers are aligned and what parts are stable and dynamic are the subject of intense study. But what do they mean?