The Action Potential Is the Original Form of Plato’s One

Plato’s one doesn’t exist in the reality. However, everyone knows that one plus one equals two. If he didn’t know the abstract number, he could not do this calculation. That is, anyone knows Plato’s one by nature. There is a biological entity, which corresponds to Plato’s one. The leading candidate of it is the action potential of the neuron. It is the electrical signal of the neuron. Neurons communicate each other using it.

The most remarkable feature of the action potential is that it is similar to Plato’s one (1). That is, our brain can get only digital information. I quote an impressive paragraph in “From Neuron to Brain” (2).

An important feature of electrical signals is that they are virtually identical in all nerve cells of the body, whether they carry commands for movement, transmit messages about colors, shapes or painful stimuli, or interconnect various portions of the brain. A second important feature of signals is they are so similar in different animals that even a sophisticated investigator (like one of the authors of this book) is unable to tell with certainty whether a photographic record of an action potential is derived from the nerve fiber of whale, mouse, monkey, worm, tarantula, or professor. They are universal coins for the exchange of information in all nervous systems that have been investigated.

Thus, the action potential resembles Plato’s one. This means that Euclidean space is made in the brain because both the input and output signals of the brain are action potentials. Because the brain can get only digital data, it makes the analog image from digital data. The basis of our recognition is digital.

References

1.The Action Potential as the Universal Coin

2. Martin, A. R., Wallace, B. G., Fuchs, P. A., Nicholls, J. G., From Neuron to Brain 4th edition, Sinauer Associates, 2001