Undirected matter in a cell would do what comes naturally: follow the laws of thermodynamics. As useful energy becomes less available, the cell would fall apart. Indeed, that’s what happens to a dead cell. How do living cells fight the inexorable pull of entropy? The secret is not in the material, but in the instructions. Embedded instructions in the organism can tell matter to build machines that harvest energy and direct it toward functional work.

We know about the DNA-protein language and the epigenetic language. Now, two recent discoveries support the view that life is fundamentally an informational system, with messages flowing through and directing matter via living languages.

The Immune Language

An essential part of the immune system requires T lymphocytes to differentiate into billions of distinct types with receptors that can match antibodies on invading pathogens. A team claims to have found the "Rosetta Stone" for deciphering the "language of T lymphocytes." The Swiss Institute for Research in Biomedicine at Universit� della Svizzera Italiana describes the system:

How can our immune system defend us against aggressors so diverse among them as viruses, parasites, fungi and tumors? The secret lies in the large number of clones of T and B lymphocytes, each of which expresses a particular specific receptor. Until a few years ago, deciphering the complexity of this vast repertoire was considered impossible. A "Rosetta stone", or a key for decoding, was missing in order to "translate" and understand this "language" in all its complexity. Today, thanks to the development of new methods for DNA sequencing (next generation sequencing, NGS), it is possible to obtain millions of sequences that represent the "identity card" of T lymphocytes. But how is it possible to use this data to trace back to the specificity of the single clones, and how can we understand their function?

Each "identity card" is represented by a unique receptor sequence on the lymphocyte. Unique sequences that are recognized by other parties are essential elements of a language. How does this living language work in the immune system? It’s something like the codes an army would use in battle:

According to Federica Sallusto, "using this new approach we can rapidly decipher the language of T lymphocytes, that is, their identity, specificity and function, and we can do it for the thousands of clones that mediate the immune response against microbes and vaccines. In this way we discovered that when a naive T cell recognizes a pathogen and proliferates in order to eradicate it, the progeny cells may undergo different fates, such as acquiring the ability to produce different types of cytokines or to migrate to different tissues of the organism. This extreme flexibility of T lymphocytes represents a new element that explains how the human immune system is able to respond to attacks with different weapons and on several fronts".

The Neuron Language

Another living language works in the central nervous system. A news item from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste talks about "The brain’s electrical alphabet" and how its unique sequences create messages that are transmitted along neural circuits. A team of Swiss and Italian scientists discovered a rich "multichannel" language at work:

Nerve signals consist of sequences of electrical pulses ("spikes") that travel along communication channels, or neural circuits. What alphabet do these sequences use to transmit the information? In other words, what makes up the brain’s language? According to a new study published in Current Biology, the information is contained in both the rate and the precise, detailed temporal distribution of pulses. To distinguish one message from another, the rate of spikes varies over a relatively long time span of tens of milliseconds. This "spike rate code" has been known for many years. What’s new is the demonstration of a "spike timing code" operating on a millisecond scale. In addition, the research found that, contrary to what was thought until now, spike timing may be even more influential than spike rate, and that the two codes complement each other to form a more informative message.

Once again we see sequences as the essence of the language. This language is conducted along communications channels to remote receivers that recognize the sequences and can respond appropriately. What’s exciting about this new research is that enriched messages can be transmitted by multiplexing two codes on the same channel. They give an example:

"The two coding systems, one based on spike rate and the other on timing, give rise to multiple channels along the same transmission line", explains Diamond. "If we take tactile sensation, for example, the brain uses these multiple channels to communicate aspects of the stimulus – intensity of the touch, texture of the surface, shape of the object and so on — which could not be conveyed by a single communication channel" adds Panzeri.

"We demonstrated that, contrary to what was believed until now, the exact timing of spikes encodes highly important information that complements and surpasses, in our experiments, the information conveyed by spike rate", explains Diamond. "The timing of spikes for example, provides a greater amount of information since the potential number of messages exceeds that produced by rate alone. And the timing of spikes leads to the brain’s final interpretation of the stimulus".

Some might argue that the articles are just speaking metaphorically. The processes are mechanical, dependent on contacts of proteins with one another. We shouldn’t anthropomorphize these molecules; it’s all just matter in motion. As if in rebuttal, the article says this:

"Thanks to this discovery we have a greater understanding of how to imitate the brain’s language, and hence reproduce it", concludes Stefano Panzeri. "We can, in fact, foresee developing robotic prostheses, such as limbs for amputees, capable of communicating with the brain in a complex, bi-directional manner, so as to restore not only motor function but also the senses, like the sense of touch".

What this implies is that the information, not the matter, is the essence of the system. Robot manufacturers could, in principle, create electronic interfaces to the neurons on both the sending and receiving ends. The sending signal could be routed past an injury through human-designed electronics, transmitted faithfully, and reconnected beyond the injury. The system, therefore, does not depend on protein contacts. It’s a message that is independent of the substrate.

Notice the evident joy in discovery:

"Our results indicate that information transmitted through the detailed timing of spikes should not be underestimated, and that the nervous system communicates by opening several channels to convey every message", comments Diamond. "This is probably one of the secrets underlying the richness of our perceptions".

The Transmission Fidelity Code

The brain’s messaging system leaves nothing to chance. Consider the problem of attenuation: the farther the receiver, the more the probability of loss. This news from Freiburg University describes how the brain solves that problem so that the receiver gets a reliable signal:

We have approximately 100 billion nerve cells in our brains, all of which communicate with one another. Why do they lead to clear thoughts or purposeful actions instead of mere gibberish? The reason lies, among other things, in a small group of inhibitory nerve cells that can use the messenger GABA to curb the activity of other nerve cells.

They go on to describe structures called "basket cells" with "a long and widely branching axon, with which they can control hundreds to thousands of target cells scattered over a broad area." These express more of the GABA inhibitors than other neurons. Through experiments, "the team discovered that the farther away a target cell is, the smaller and longer are their inhibitory currents." This "distant-dependent inhibition" appears to be another way of multiplexing a signal along the transmission lines.

Figuring this out required looking for a reason in the way these billions of nerve cells are arranged:

What could be the reason for such a complex structure? While this question cannot be answered in its entirety, the scientists investigated the consequences of a distance-dependent inhibition in computer simulations of neuronal networks. Contrary to expectations, the weakening inhibition enables the basket cells to precisely control the activity of a large number of nerve cells and thus to synchronize them. The synchronization of entire brain areas leads to rhythmic brain activities like gamma oscillations, which serve a crucial function in higher mental processes. The new approach of distance-dependent inhibition could be an important component in the regulation of brain networks that enables the brain to orchestrate the activity of 100 billion individual yet connected nerve cells to produce a thought.

Now, wouldn’t it be exactly the wrong conclusion to say that neurons "produce a thought"? We have just seen in three cases where information guides matter. In the immune system, informational sequences guide T lymphocytes to recognize pathogens. In the brain’s alphabet, informational sequences use the transmission lines to send multiplexed messages using two codes. And in distance-dependent inhibition, GABA is a "messenger" that "orchestrates" the synchronization of the signal over a wide-area network.

These living language systems seem uncannily familiar. We have a lot of experience with communications networks, multichannel transmission, and message fidelity. We even know about antivirus technology — how to recognize a threat by its sequence. In every case where we see the origin of such systems, they were created by intelligent design. It would be weird to say that the Internet creates the messages that run on it.

So you might correct their conclusion to say not that the network produces thought, but thought produced the network.

Image credit: Antonino Cassotta e Mathilde Foglierini/ Istituto di Ricerca in Biomedicina.