THE brain is noisy, with billions of neurons constantly sending signals, but far from causing problems, the chattering actually boosts the brain’s processing power. “Our brain may perform better by optimising the levels of internal noise,” says neuroscientist Keiichi Kitajo. If so, it should be possible to use random noise to help our brains function better in some situations.
It isn’t easy to control or measure the noise naturally generated by neurons within the brain. So instead Kitajo, now at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and Yoshiharu Yamamoto at the University of Tokyo, showed volunteers signals on a computer screen. This enabled them to…
