The nature of neuronal words and language

Abstract

Individual neurons in the brain possess natural language in the form of energy-dependent ac-tion potentials or spikes (S) operating on a mil-lisecond timescale that, along with pauses (P) between spikes, constitute a two letter (S, P) “alphabet” that is used to generate meaningful frequency-encoded neuronal “words”. These words are then used to transmit information to other neurons in the form of phrases consisting of two or more words that are contained within longer pause-delineated structured declarative sentences. In this article, the nature of neuronal words and language are described, and exam-ples provided that illustrate the way in which neuronal language is used by the brain to in-teract with and interpret both its internal and external environments. It is hoped that a fuller understanding of the language used by neurons to communicate may lead to development of novel treatments for a number of human neu-ropathies.