When nerve cells communicate with each other, they do so through electrical pulses.  Most everything in our bodies comes down to induction when you think about it.   

Since the early days of neuroscience, the accepted idea was that nerve cells simply sum up tiny action potentials generated by the incoming pulses and emit an action potential themselves when a threshold is reached but Moritz Helias and Markus Diesmann from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (Japan) and Moritz Deger and Stefan Rotter from the Bernstein Center Freiburg (Germany) say they have figured out exactly what happens right before a nerve cell emits a pulse

They did computer simulations of 'brain-like' networks, so calibrate your expectations accordingly because actual brains don't need boundary conditions, and say they have discovered that the brain is able to process information much faster than previously thought and that single neurons are already able to multiply, opening the door to more complex forms of computing.

The discovery was made using computers but the inspiration was the awesome power of nature; in this case Japanese gardens and the ‘shishi odoshi’, a reed of bamboo, which is open on one end and tilts when a certain amount of rainwater has accumulated inside. Just as one tiny raindrop ultimately causes the shishi odoshi to achieve a tipping point and spill it water, one small electric pulse will cause a neuron to produce an impulse of its own.

The neurons in the brain are uncountable, a continental forest of bamboo, and the activity sent between them is more like a thunderstorm of raindrops, in staying with their analogy, but Moritz Helias from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan says they found a precise mathematical method and it needs to consider the detailed course of events only at the time when a neuron is about to release an action potential.

They say their hypothesis not only explains why nerve cells process information much faster than previously thought but it also makes evident that neurons do more than just add up pulses - in the decisive moments, they actually multiply. The availability of this mathematical operation, write the scientists, finally explains how the brain is able to execute complex computations. They say their insights in the basic processes of the brain will in turn inspire more powerful processor architectures in the future.

Citation: Helias M, Deger M, Rotter S, Diesmann M (2010) Instantaneous Non-Linear Processing by Pulse-Coupled Threshold Units. PLoS Comput Biol 6(9): e1000929. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000929