[Verse 1]
Don't call it a wire, call it a living tree,
dendrites arborizing — that means they branch out, wild and free.
Each twig can fire sodium, calcium, or NMDA sparks,
one single cell is secretly two layers in the dark.
The soma's just the trunk, but the branches do the thinking,
tiny local storms arrive before the final blinking.
[Chorus]
Dendrites that compute, branches keep the score,
a sum that isn't simple, it's supralinear and more.
Cluster up your inputs, stack them on one limb,
that's an AND gate whispering where the signal's slim.
Shunt it with chloride, divide instead of cut,
a veto at the soma slams the axon shut.
Dendrites that compute, two layers in one shell,
the branch decides the answer long before the bell.
[Verse 2]
Scatter your inputs, they barely make a peep,
but bunch them on one branch and the voltage starts to leap —
not adding, multiplying, a supralinear climb,
threshold crossed together, perfectly in time.
That lonely stretch of membrane turns detective on its own,
checking "are you both here?" before it rings the phone.
Call it a local AND gate, hidden in the bough,
logic built from lipids — the dendrite knows it now.
[Chorus]
Dendrites that compute, branches keep the score,
a sum that isn't simple, it's supralinear and more.
Cluster up your inputs, stack them on one limb,
that's an AND gate whispering where the signal's slim.
Shunt it with chloride, divide instead of cut,
a veto at the soma slams the axon shut.
[Verse 3]
Now meet the quiet guardian, inhibition's subtle friend,
chloride channels open near the soma's very end.
It doesn't subtract numbers, it divides the whole affair,
Koch and Poggio called it a veto, sharp and rare.
Excitation's attenuated — meaning weakened, thinned to naught,
the loudest chorus silenced by one chloride thought.
[Bridge]
Two thousand twenty, Gidon found the key,
human cortex, layer two and three,
calcium spikes climbing branches, casting their own vote,
solving XOR inside a single neuron's throat.
No network needed, no second cell required,
one dendrite alone did what two layers desired.
[Verse 4]
Here's the compass rule, so learn it, don't forget:
far from the soma, inputs gate — they modulate, not set.
Close against the trunk, they drive it, punching out a spike,
location writes the meaning, same signal, different like.
[Chorus]
Dendrites that compute, two layers in one shell,
a sum that isn't simple, ringing like a bell.
Cluster up your inputs, that's an AND somehow,
shunt it with chloride, veto taking its bow.
Near the trunk you fire, far away you steer,
dendrites that compute — the logic's hiding here.
[Outro]
One cell, many brains, branching out to learn,
the tree decides the answer at every twist and turn.