The thing to remember here is that human brain tissue is famously hard to acquire, so researchers are usually stuck with rodent tissue. What’s more, brain tissue goes bad in just a couple of days, so you have to work extra hard and fast to get any kind of reliable data that’s applicable in non-zombie related scenarios. Thus, events conspired to make this one of the first dendrite studies on human neurons, and the scientists worked around the clock to extract as much information about their “electrical properties” as they could. 

The newly discovered brain spike is a hybrid of the super-quick “sodium event” (an electricity spike that happens when sodium enters the dendrite) and the extra-long “calcium event.” This means it’s caused by calcium but still extremely short, and the apparent uniqueness of the event in the human brain has caused the researchers to suspect it might be the deciding factor in our brainpower. Of course, it’s worth noting that the key word here is “might.” The discovery is still brand new, and the researchers themselves fully admit that it’s too early to say whether their discovery is the missing link in making us so “human.” Still, for now, isn’t it kind of cool that science believes our brains may be zapping with a strange type of super-electricity that has made us what we are?