Mechanism behind 'how brain maintains balance' discovered

The researchers have found a new fundamental mechanism that explains how the brain maintains its internal balance.

It involves the brain's most basic inner wiring and the processes that control whether a neuron relays information to other neurons or suppresses the transmission of information.

This constant ratio, called the E/I ration, was known to exist for individual neurons at a given time but this study goes a step further and shows that the E/I ratio is constant across multiple neurons in the cortex of mice and likely also humans, since the fundamental architecture of mammalian brains is highly conserved across species.

Massimo Scanziani, PhD said that neurons in our brain drive by pushing the brake and the accelerator at the same time, so this means that there is no stimulus that you can apply that will activate purely excitatory neurons or purely inhibitory ones.

Scanziani further explained that the study shows that the inhibitory neurons were the master regulators that contact hundreds or thousands of cells and made sure that the inhibitory synapses at each of these contacts was matched to the different amounts of excitation that these cells were receiving.

It was also stated that if E/I balance is broken, it will completely alter people's perception of the world and they will be less able to adjust and adapt appropriately to the range of stimulation in a normal day without being overwhelmed or completely oblivious.

Minghan Xue, a postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology said that it paves the way for interventions that might restore the balance in the brain and could help understand what goes wrong in the diseased state.

The research is published in online publication of the journal Nature.