"A fundamental belief in neuroscience has been that neurons are digital devices. They either generate a spike or not. These results show that the dendrites do not behave purely like a digital device,"
said Mehta.
"Dendrites do generate digital, all-or-none spikes, but they also show large analogue fluctuations that are not all or none. This is a major departure from what neuroscientists have believed for about 60 years."
So how much more processing power do we suddenly have in our brains?
Mehta explains that because dendrites are nearly 100 times larger in volume than somas, the large number of dendritic spikes means we could have over 100 times the processing capacity than we thought.