Será que o cérebro humano se parece com o universo? Mero acaso, fortuita necessidade ou design inteligente?

Front. Phys., 16 November 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2020.525731

The Quantitative Comparison Between the Neuronal Network and the Cosmic Web

www.frontiersin.orgF. Vazza1,2,3* and www.frontiersin.orgA. Feletti4,5

1Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Universitá di Bologna, , Bologna, Italy

2Hamburger Sternwarte, Hamburg, Germany

3Istituto di Radio Astronomia, INAF, Bologna, Italy

4Institute of Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine, and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

5Azienda Ospedaliera‐Universitaria di Modena, Modena, Italy

1Left: section of cerebellum, with magnification factor 40x, obtained with electron microscopy (Dr. E. Zunarelli, University Hospital of Modena); right: section of a cosmological simulation, with an extension of 300 million light-years on each side (Vazza et al. 2019 A&A). Credit: University of Bologna

We investigate the similarities between two of the most challenging and complex systems in Nature: the network of neuronal cells in the human brain, and the cosmic network of galaxies. We explore the structural, morphological, network properties and the memory capacity of these two fascinating systems, with a quantitative approach. In order to have an homogeneous analysis of both systems, our procedure does not consider the true neural connectivity but an approximation of it, based on simple proximity. The tantalizing degree of similarity that our analysis exposes seems to suggest that the self-organization of both complex systems is likely being shaped by similar principles of network dynamics, despite the radically different scales and processes at play.

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