Interdependence and Memory in Lightning Flash Sequences


An interesting paper because lighting flashes are the main source of the Schumann Resonances, electromagnetic signals that has been hypothesized that can be related to a Earth mind (in its scale), a study by Persinger [1] conclude that lighting have similar properties to the electrical activity of brain (and that only scales are changed), in this paper maybe it can be found another similar function related to a certain firing interdependence (as in neurons the electrical activity of near neurons conditioned the firing of the others).

" We show that the consecutive cells are probabilistically interdependent – when the network is up to creating a flash in a new cell, it remembers the cell of the previous flash. Furthermore, the inter-arrival time between flashes occurring in same cell follow a highly skewed, nonexponential distribution, which means that the network remember the elapsed time. Finally, there is an inverse relation between the interdependence level in the network, quantified by its mutual information, and the median of that inter-arrival time distribution of flashes within the same cell; higher levels of interdependence decrease the median down to a certain lower bound. That is, the interactions between the cells in the network accelerate the creation of flashes within cells, up to a critical limit, which represents the minimal charging time in clouds."

Other interesting quotes:

" cells can be described as leaky integrate-and-fire oscillators (Ernst et al., 1995), which has to reach a critical level before discharging and generating a flash."

" It appears that the sequence of flashes has a preference for occurrence that reflects a mutual electrical interaction between clouds. The analysis of inter-arrival times of CG flashes shows that there exists a limit between successive flashes, further supporting the idea of clouds being "integrate-and-fire" oscillators. Ernst et al. (1995) distinguished between inhibitory and excitatory types of coupling in large ensembles of globally coupled oscillators, the latter leading to a prevailing of a mechanism of emerging and decaying synchronized clusters. We therefore suggest that thunderstorms share an excitatory type of interaction, inducing and supporting discharges in separate cells that can lead to transient synchronization of lightning activity."

[1] Persinger, M. A. (2012). Brain electromagnetic activity and lightning: potentially congruent scale-invariant quantitative properties. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, 6, 19.


Last modified on 15-Mar-16

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