What if the mathematics behind neural networks could unlock the secrets of the immune system? Physicist Ton Coolen reveals how techniques from statistical mechanics, originally developed for obscure magnetic materials, now expose deep structural parallels between how brains store memories and how immune systems learn to fight disease. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Ton Coolen joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott to explain how a collaboration with Italian researchers led him to apply finite connectivity analysis, a mathematical framework only available since around 2000, to models of immune network function. The resulting models map directly onto Hopfield-type attractor networks from neural network theory, with cytokine signaling playing the role of synaptic connections and B-cell receptor evolution funct ...