Perhaps they are observing the “God Pattern” – a fundamental, universal pattern underlying all things (patterns) – hidden, as it were, in the noise that pervades everything everywhere.

A rather amazing study out of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis discovered that EEG readings once discarded as “noise” are instead remarkably useful information – using a well-known mathematical technique a pattern emerges that matches many other patterns in nature and in human endeavors.

“We don’t yet know how to decode the information contained in these signals, but the fact that they’re such a large part of brain activity and that they can be modulated when you do a task suggests that they are going to be very important to understanding the brain,” says lead author Biyu Jade He, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow.

By using a mathematical technique called spectral analysis, neuroscientists have found that these “irregular” signals produce a regular pattern – one that is nearly identical to spectral analyses of many other phenomena that produce the same pattern. For example, analysis of the most frequently used words in a language and the number of times they appear in a typical text produces a similar pattern when graphed. Analyzing changes in stock market prices versus how fast they change, or the power and frequency of waves of seismic energy also produces similar results.

“Why this pattern is so common is one of the great questions of modern physics, and it’s spawned a relatively young field of research called complex dynamics,” says Biyu He. “With the exception of a few labs, though, this hasn’t been given much consideration in neuroscience.”

Perhaps they are observing the “God Pattern” – a fundamental, universal pattern underlying all things (patterns) – hidden, as it were, in the noise that pervades everything everywhere. Understanding of this fundamental pattern might help us make much more accurate predictions – even for those things we currently think of as purely random. It might also allow us to better control and make significant changes to our environment when we unravel the mechanisms involved in the God Pattern as it pertains to such things as quantum mechanics, thought generation and transmission, stellar mechanics, financial sciences, behavioral sciences, and neuroscience – the list could go on and on…

This is exciting indeed!

Source: He BJ, Zempel JM, Snyder AZ, Raichle ME. The temporal structures and functional significance of scale-free brain activity. Neuron, May 13, 2010. Funding from the National Institutes of Health supported this research. Washington University School of Medicine.