Our Brain Matter is Stuck at a Phase Transition,Says New Research.

New research reveals that the brain is in a perfectly balanced state, preventing it from transitioning to a gas or liquid. 

Based on fractal patterns in neurons, researchers believe our brains exist at or near a state called criticality, where they are extremely close to shifting from one state of matter to another. 

However, they admit they don't know what either state is.Despite the common belief that the brain is solid, scientists at Northwestern University have found that its composition might not be so straightforward. 

They identified components of neurons that match materials undergoing a phase shift, like the transition from liquid to gas.

"The structure of the brain at the cellular level appears to be near a phase transition," said Helen Ansell, the first author of the study. 

She compared this to how ice melts into water, emphasizing that they aren't suggesting the brain is near melting, but rather at an unknown transition point. If it were on either side of this critical point, it wouldn't function as a brain.

Ansell and colleague István Kovács, using 3D brain images of humans, mice, and fruit flies, discovered that brain tissue exhibits traits of universal scaling known as criticality.

 This is the point at which a material is either about to—or already undergoing—a state change.One key indicator is that brain cells at the nanoscale display self-similar fractal patterns, meaning a small part of the pattern resembles the entire pattern. 

The researchers also found a broad size distribution among neurons and variety in different neuron segments, traits common in all critical systems in physics.

Surprisingly, the hallmarks of criticality were observed in both rat and fruit fly brains as well as human brain tissue, suggesting a phase change quality in all brains.

"Initially, these structures look quite different—a whole fly brain is roughly the size of a small human neuron," Ansell said. "But we found emerging properties that are surprisingly similar.

"The findings, published in Nature Communications Physics, could reshape statistical models of the brain and inform the development of neural networks in computers. The researchers plan to continue their research to see if the state of criticality more universally applies to other organisms.

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