Also... "2.3. Topology Organizes Spike Correlations" <- "Energy makes it go!"
@neuroskeptic on twitter is a good source for examples of questionable neuroscience, their blog is http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/
“I believe that if phosphorus nuclear spin is not being used for quantum processing, then quantum mechanics is not operative in longtime scales in cognition,” Fisher said. “Ruling that out is important scientifically. It would be good for science to know.”
this seems like a perspective on a problem with pure theoretical research. like why print "Cycles of Time" instead of publishing in a peer reviewed journal? is Penrose being disingenuous or is he just trying to share an idea he finds interesting even if reasonably speculative?
the EPFL result is interesting even if they wanted to analyze it as network motifs in a directed graph, but that wouldn't account for the symmetry they presumably observed in the "higher dimensional polyhedrons" would it?
This is one of the most disingenuous papers I've read in a while, indeed my first reaction was "wow, what a load of horse shit".
The editorial on the journal's main "selling point" is that it applies algebraic topology "in a novel way, never before seen" to neuroscience. There is absolutely no reason to use algebraic topology in this context.
They're basically counting in a variety of ways network motifs - which Uri Alon & others have been doing for years. This is entirely possible to do using directed graphs, basic combinatorics, and elementary probability.
As other commenters have pointed out, there's at best a weak correlation to actual brain activity, and the amount of data is not actually that large and within reach of off-the-shelf graph software to process (or a python script).
This is also not the first time the senior author of the paper has hyped otherwise lackluster results. It's easier to impress a TED audience than your peers. Here's a critical review on Nature:
https://www.nature.com/news/rethinking-the-brain-1.17168