Honeybee brains seem to use alpha waves similarly to primate brains | Hacker News Reader

Honeybee brains seem to use alpha waves similarly to primate brains

zmescience.com

118 pointslaurex23 comments

I think many insects are far smarter than we have assumed.

Bumblebees can learn to pull a string to receive a reward [1]. But maybe that's just blind conditioning? Well if another bumblebee watches it happen from behind a glass wall, it can perform the task without being trained at all [2].

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSCr5OxXN1A 2: https://faunalytics.org/bumblebee-school-learning-and-teachi...

And of course Portia spiders show remarkable memory, planning, and on-the-spot flexibility in hunting strategies. Also they can do the same kind of counting that many human cultures do: 1, 2, and many.

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-spiders.html

Sounds like an instance of Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Over and over again we've assumed that something simply isn't possible for creatures other than humans to do, and over and over again we've eventually discovered that we're not that unique after all.

Having spent a lot of time with insects in my youth, I think carpenter ants are pretty intelligent.

My personal theory is that having a mind is pretty easy to come by, the difference between brain sizes affect how we perceive the universe. Brain size incrementally makes us smarter, but mostly it just changes how we perceive the universe.

> Queens took about ninety six-minute naps a day—and studies of their brain activity suggest they have dreams.

https://www.welcomewildlife.com/all-about-ants/

Bees are super cool, but [2] doesn’t say a glass wall, but describes a more physically-involved process.

From that link:

> A bee lands beside another one who had already pulled a string for reward, gaining the reward without pulling herself/himself.

> The observer learns to associate the other bee with reward and typically begins following her/him around, keeping in close contact as they walk.

> The observing bee would be in direct contact with the string-pulling bee throughout the pull, usually not touching the string, although sometimes ineffectively manipulating the string herself/himself as well, and ultimately gaining reward through the other bee’s efforts.

> The learners progressively change their foraging behaviors from observers to competent string pullers.

"In 1929 Hans Berger discovered the alpha oscillations: prominent, ongoing oscillations around 10 Hz in the electroencephalogram of the human brain. These alpha oscillations are among the most widely studied brain signals, related to cognitive phenomena such as attention, memory and consciousness. However, the mechanisms by which alpha oscillations affect human cognition await demonstration. Here, we suggest the honey bee brain as an experimentally more accessible model system for investigating the functional role of alpha oscillations. We found a prominent spontaneous oscillation around 18 Hz that is reduced in amplitude upon olfactory stimulation. Similar to alpha oscillations in primates, the phase of this oscillation biased both timing of neuronal spikes and amplitude of high-frequency gamma activity (40–450 Hz). These results suggest a common role of alpha oscillations across phyla and provide an unprecedented new venue for causal studies on the relationship between neuronal spikes, brain oscillations and cognition."

Admittedly I'm very pedestrian when it comes to neurology. But my understanding is that much like the bands of the EM spectrum (radio, ir, visible etc), the bands of brain waves (alpha, beta, gamma etc) are just human imposed categorizations. There's no real dividing line. Eg you won't find a lack of brain wave frequencies right on the borderline between alpha and beta.

I think it is fairly obvious that brain waves on the 10Hz scale must be useful for processing / reacting to / controlling phenomena that happen on 1/10th of a second time scales. The shorter the time scale, the higher the relevant frequency. In my rank speculation, bees have "alpha" waves because something they do happens to be on that time scale.

I doubt there is some cognitive mechanism to consciousness that humans, bees, and no other species has in common.

I would disagree with this characterization of light and brain waves. The various portions of the em spectrum are distinct in terms of their optical properties. To some extent this is related to the common types/state of matter on earth but in other ways it is related to the sizes of atoms, molecules and the such and this has some basis in fundamental constants. Similarly alpha and theta rhythms have clear physiological relationships. There is some debate about whether gamma is a true oscillation but gamma activation is clearly indicative of neural/cognitive activity in a way that theta and alpha are not.

Well sure the wavelength of a given light beam makes it useful for interacting (or passing through) things of different sizes. And the frequency of a brain wave makes it useful for thinking about tasks of different temporal sizes.

I think that thinking of these waves as the same phenomena with the same rules but on different scales is a more powerful tool than trying to divide a continuous spectrum into a large taxonomy with "known" properties.

If we thought of the radio spectrum as communication waves, infrared light as waves to do with heat, and visible light as a medium only for localized spatial information, then we would be stumped by the cosmic microwave background, TV remotes , and light houses.

Oh, the key signal processing idea is this: alpha is the dominant frequency band (highest amplitude, most resonant frequency). The other bands are roughly harmonic doublings or halvings of alpha. That is how the brain couples different time scales together -- it can synchronize gamma cycles to the beat of alpha. It's like music, then, for integrating different rhythms together.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030439401...

Well that's interesting but raises a big question for me. Why does the brain need to couple different time scales together? Why should my breathing rate be a multiple of my typing rate. What does synchronizing processes at different time scales accomplish?

Generally speaking, information integration is entropy reduction, which is essential for life.

As for what it accomplishes, think of how walking is a large rhythm involving the synchronization of many smaller rhythmic units. Or how perception of an object involves the integration of many small textures and elements into a whole. If those textures can be viewed as rhythms (FFT everything), it's another practical example of what synchronizing processes accomplishes.

Singer has evidence that seeing objects as a whole uses 40hz inhibitory interneurons to synchronize the firing of features associated with a different object. So, another object would have a different 40hz phase. In that way, the synronizing creates wholes from different parts.

Next question. If the background illumination of a room were blinking at 40Hz (Eg florescent light bulbs on 40Hz AC power), would that interfere with my visual perception? If not why not?

It probably would, because i believe objects blinking at 40hz facilitate certain motor responses. "In addition, it has been shown in humans that stimuli which flicker at gamma frequencies are processed faster by our brains than when they flicker at different frequencies" [1]

I'm super curious whether 40hz line AC might not be healthier for aging populations. Or 80hz. [2]

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38134861_Human_EEG_...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6700637/

Aren’t these frequencies merely defined by the rate of chemical reactions that occur between neurons (eg. how fast action potentials get generated and travel)?

If that’s true, it seems that this study points in the direction that bees and primates have similar neurotransmission for the brain regions studied.

This is less true than you might think. While the main neurotransmitters are the same serotonin conveys different signals in mammalian and insect brains. Additionally these chemical reactions are modulated by the cells and a long period wave like alpha is related to more macro scale connectivity. The fact that a similar macro pattern emerges is not guaranteed by the fact that a neuron is a neuron. As a metaphor water molecules are identical but a snowflake and a raindrop are totally different in their material properties.

Bees are dead stupid, though. They have varroa mites sucking their juices and don't even do anything about it. That's like if half your family had cat-sized vampires stuck to their sides and you all went about your business as usual.

"Hey Mom, how are you doing? You look pale. Must be that fat vampire that's been sucking your blood this past week. I have one too now, though - looks kinda cool! Oh well, gotta go, see ya!"

And whole bee hives actually get destroyed by those mites. Arrgh. So don't talk about the intelligence of those buggers. They're brain-dead where it matters.

That's a fun visual and I never knew about it, but can't help but immediately think about the 'Hey Mom! How are you doing? You look obese. Your arteries are completely clogged.' analogy of self-destruction in humans, even though it's not a great comparison. But I think aliens or a higher power or some more evolved species would look at many things humans do - or don't do - and think we're brain dead.

I think it's about the idea that blindspots are obvious to everyone but the being with that particular blindspot.

That's true, but I don't think we have to wait for Aliens, may be within couple of decades we gonna think how stupid we are to overdose on sugar and sugary drinks.

> within couple of decades

We already do.

Humans had fleas, ticks, and rats on and around them for millennia. It took us quite a while to finally start to get kind of good at eliminating them, but now ticks are on the rise again and now we’re actively researching cures for every disease known to rat-kind and breeding them to be invincible to everything.

The difference is that varroa mites are much larger relative to a bee, and are on the bodies of both adults and larvae. And the beehive has lots of bees whose jobs are cleaning the hive and greeting the bees returning from flight. And the mites aren't known for excreting some magic pheromones like other, less harmful beehive parasites do. So there really is no excuse for bees to fall prey to these mites.

I've read that some ants actively fight and remove parasitic flies trying to land on and infest them, so insects are definitely capable of this kind of self-protection. It's just specifically bees that do not have the genes, and cannot learn this behavior. Which proves their intelligence is severely limited.

Does that mean that Bees brains can think together like a group due to the longer wave length of Alpha waves? Ie are their thinking linked? I am thinking like short wave radio which travels long distance, vs High frequency radio which travels short distance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_wave

I wonder, has anyone attempted to study whether any aspect of decision-making or reasoning fall along this frequency range? Waves could be something like a CPU clock cycling. Which may affect neuron function globally, representing different mental states like sleep.

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