Decoding
the Language
of Neurons
A new study reveals surprising
variations in the neural code
IN THE DYSTOPIAN WORLD of
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-
Four, the government of Oceania
aims to achieve thought control
through the restriction of language.
As explained by the character Syme,
a lexicologist who is working to
replace the English language with
the greatly simplified “Newspeak”:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of
Newspeak is to narrow the range of
thought?” While Syme’s own reflec-
tions were short-lived, the merits of
his argument were not: the words
and structure of a language can
influence the thoughts and decisions
of its speakers. This holds for English
and Greek, Inuktitut and Newspeak.
It also may hold for the neural code,
the basic electrical vocabulary of the
neurons in the brain.
Neural codes, like spoken lan-
guages, are tasked with conveying
all manner of information. Some of
this information is immediately
required for survival; other infor-
mation has a less acute use. To
accommodate these different needs,
a balance is struck between the
richness of information being
transferred and the speed orreliability with which it is transferred.
Where the balance is set depends
on context. In the example of
language, the mention of the movie
Jaws at a dinner party might result
in a ranging and patient—if discon-
certing—discussion around theemotional impact of the film. In
contrast, the observation of a dorsal
fin breaking through the surf at the
beach would probably elicit a single
word, screamed by many beachgo-
ers at once: “Shark!” In one context,
the language used has been opti-
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