Here’s an interesting question: are there optical communication channels in the brain? This may be a radical suggestion but one for which there is more than a little evidence to think it is worth pursuing.

Many organisms produce light to communicate, to attract mates, and so on. Twenty years ago, biologists discovered that rat brains also produce photons in certain circumstances. The light is weak and hard to detect, but neuroscientists were surprised to find it at all.

Since then, the evidence has grown. So-called biophotons seem to be produced naturally in the brain and elsewhere by the decay of certain electronically excited molecular species. Mammalian brains produce biophotons with wavelength of between 200 and 1,300 nanometers—in other words, from near infrared to ultraviolet.

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