Sandia researchers discovered that a 2013 cortical circuit model has been secretly performing sparse finite element PDE solving all along. The spiking dynamics literally implement iterative relaxation — not 'AI doing math,' but architecture doing math. It had been hiding in plain sight for 12 years.

If the isomorphism holds, the brain may be natively computing continuum mechanics as part of ordinary sensory processing. The implication isn't that we can make brain-like computers solve physics — it's that physics was already what brain-like computers were solving.

(Theilman & Aimone, Nature Machine Intelligence)