Not to mention, even if inside-neuron computation turned out to be largely irrelevant for the whole-brain computation, it's still fascinating to look at how much computation, sensing and planning is happening inside any cell just for the cell to live in its environment. We tend to make a huge distinction between single organisms and their constituent parts, but human cells are not all that hugely different from bacteria in terms of their need for doing smart work to live.
I think brainwaves are probably mostly an epiphenomenon of the electrical signals that make up our brains' computation. Of course, EM waves being what they are, there is feedback between that computation and EM waves. But I think a good way to think about it might be like a computer giving off radio signals during certain computations, like [].
[] https://news.softpedia.com/news/emitting-radio-waves-from-a-...
Just as transistors are fundamental to processors, neurons are fundamental to brains, and it is important that we understand these basic building blocks if we ever hope to understand the brain and intelligence as a whole.
Propagation delay and circular loops. No it doesn't have to be "external" stimuli. There's no explicit input and output layer in how a real brain is constructed. That is an artificial constraint put on artificial neural nets to make a programmers job easier. A real brain can and likely does have self stimulating loops.
>Just as transistors are fundamental to processors, neurons are fundamental to brains
Transistors are also quite simple as individual units and the computational complexity comes about in how they are connected.
This is what I understand causes epilepsy. At least when they are out of control.
Furthermore, the brain is far to wet and warm for quantum mechanics to be relevant. Coherence times would suck.
For example old CRTs gave off RF signals that could be decoded to read the contents of the screen but the CRT display was not designed to be a radio transmitter.