Human brain 'like colony of ants'
Updated on 25 February 2009
The human brain behaves like a colony of ants, with the individual creatures interacting like cells, a study has suggested.
Social insects like ants and bees make collective decisions like fleeing danger or home-making using similar mechanisms to the primate mind, according the University of Bristol.
Dr James Marshall and his team found colonies of "house-hunting social insects" appeared to make compromises in decision-making as one unit in a way seeming to replicate the interaction of brain neurons.
Others have speculated that insect colonies and brains might work in similar ways - such as Douglas Hofstadter in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Godel, Escher, Bach. But the Bristol study is the first to theoretically link the two.
Dr Marshall said: "The analysis we present represents the first step in establishing a common theoretical framework for the study of decision-making in biological systems. This framework should prove applicable to diverse biological systems at many levels of biological complexity, including humans."
The results, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, draw the first formal parallels between decision-making circuits in the primate visual cortex and social insect colonies.
Both "systems" make choices which reflect an "optimal compromise" between speed and accuracy of decision-making, by assessing competing streams of evidence. Neurons in the brain and social insect colonies must both reach a point at which a decision is initiated, Dr Marshall said.
Despite their impressive individual abilities, neurons are simple in comparison with individually sophisticated social insects.
Nevertheless, both systems can implement robust, efficient decisions, regardless of how sophisticated their individual components are.
It was too soon to say whether the theory could have implications for the treatment of neurological disorders, Dr Marshall said.
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