How fast are our brains?

[AznMaverick]

How can we determine how fast our brains process...and would we calculate it with cycles per second just like a computer?

 

[Marauder-]

I think mine's going at 5.5 Thz OC'd to 5.8 Thz. LOL

 

[SendTrash]

the brain, and also in general humans, are not constant.. so you cannot even hope to compare it to anything

 

[gittyup]

Some are faster than others!

 

[AznMaverick]

dammit i think i'm being around computers a little too much, now i'm even thinking "how much data would our brains be able to hold...will be ever be able to run out of space to remember things?...

 

[dc]

uh oh, my pentium 100 with a broken fan brain is overheating again.

 

[Jothaxe]

This is a fascinating question that has serious implications to fields like the philosophy of psychology.

In some senses it is very helpful to compare the brain to a CPU and think of it like a processor.

But examined in detail this is not always helpful, because the algorithms the brain uses for "processing" information are not performed like those of a CPU.

Specifically the brain uses highly parallel methods for nearly all lower level thinking. The closest thing that a brain has to a "cycle" is the time it takes for a synapse to fire, but since this doesnt happen in series, it isnt very cyclical.

An interesting sidenote: it has been learned that the human mind is able to perform visual recognition tasks in times as short as 1/20 of a second. Based on synapse firing times, it has been determined that this leaves time for no more than 100 steps in a neural-net sequence. This has been labeled the "100 step rule."

Compare this to the way we would teach a computer to perform a visual recognition task: scan the entire image, performing complex edge detection routines. Using this information, determine those feature which are typically part of larger scale stuctures. Then perform a statistical analysis of these features to determing if they appear in a likely "constellation." This entire algorithm may contain many millions of sequential steps.

The brain < 100 steps
A CPU > 1000000 steps (maybe closer to 1000000000 for a really accurate routine...)

This just gives you an idea of how differently the brain operates from a CPU. The amazing thing is that we are starting to build CPU's that can compete on the same time scales as the brain, doing things sequentially.

Hopefully neuroscience will advance in the next few decades to the point that we really understand what is going on in the brain to the point that we can implement it in machines. I want to be alive to see it...

 

[Jothaxe]

<< dammit i think i'm being around computers a little too much, now i'm even thinking &quot;how much data would our brains be able to hold...will be ever be able to run out of space to remember things?... >>



It is clear that our brains can hold only a finite amount of information, because they have only a finite number of neurons.

The difference in this case is that when a computer runs out of space, it simply cannot hold any more data.

If a human was to start to &quot;run out&quot; of space it would be different. The brain has a property known as &quot;graceful degradation.&quot; If you tried to continue cramming more stuff in, you would still be able to fit it, but everything else would start to become less vivid. In other words, you wouldnt lose any particular pieces of information, but all the information would become less stable.

Consider what happens if you randomly lesion portions of a brain and hard drive. Amazingly, a brain can continue to function even if large sections of neurons are missing. Although performance may be lessened, there is no real emergency.

On the other hand, if you randomly removed chunks of your hard disk, you would be in for a surprise. If you happened to corrupt even a few bits of data in the right place, it is possible that nothing would function.

 

[RossMAN]

Jothaxe - Awesome posts, thanks!

 

[Jothaxe]

Thanks RossMAN, I find this stuff fascinating... glad to see you do too!

 

[rc5]

The computation power of a general human being's brain is merely enough to run M$ windows 2010.

 

[Tominator]

<< &quot;graceful degradation.&quot; >>


Brilliant! You just explained about the Liberal Mindset! LOL!

...my only problem is thast they want to take the rest of us along with them...

...I'll be back, It's time to feed my computer...

 

[RossGr]

Douglas Hofstaters (sp?) book GEB, Godel, Esher, Bach . The Enternal Golden Braid, has some very good insight into the operation of the brain. His analogy is to an ant hill. In an ant hill, he claims, each ant is wandering at radom. BUT there is alway a net migration of a given type of ant to the point of greatest need. He compares a neuron in the brain to an ant. Each neuron fires randomly but net patterens form a thought. It is in the patterns where the wonder lies. The number of thoughts (data?) that the brain can contain is not limited by the number of neurons but by the FACTORIAL of the number of neurons, this is a big number.

The complexity of problems that the brain can solve with ease is amazing, For example when you are accelerating down a curved freeway ramp to merge with traffic you are able to pick your hole, adjust your speed and find your self in the correct postion when the hole arrives. This really requires a signifiant amout of mathmatics to model on a digital computer, but the brain does it and you are carring on a coversation with a passenger.

 

[RossGr]

<< << &quot;graceful degradation.&quot; >> >>





<< Brilliant! You just explained about the Liberal Mindset! LOL! >>



Heck at least this implies that there was something to start with!

More then can be said for most conservatives.

 

[kami]

A teacher once told me that if you put the brain into computer terms it can hold about 15 billion terrabytes of data (or 15,000,000,000,000 gigabytes).

Now I'm not sure if he pulled that number out of his ass (probably) or if its true.

 

[chainbolt]

My dogs brain brain is faster than sound:|:Q:disgust::frown:

 

[Zuph]

<< Consider what happens if you randomly lesion portions of a brain and hard drive. Amazingly, a brain can continue to function even if large sections of neurons are missing. Although performance may be lessened, there is no real emergency.

On the other hand, if you randomly removed chunks of your hard disk, you would be in for a surprise. If you happened to corrupt even a few bits of data in the right place, it is possible that nothing would function. >>



If you were to remove the right parts from a human brain, it would also cease to function, just like a hard drive.

 

[Aihyah]

our brains are insanely fast... most of what it does is unconscious.. just balancing and processing all the sensory data is insane... especially coordinating it all almost instantly. solving math probs and stuff isn't whats so impressive. its the rest.

 

[kami]

nerve conduction velocity is pretty fast...but slow in the grand scheme of things.

 

[jamison]

What kind of cooling is needed for brains? I heard the Taisol doesn't cut it. Maybe water cooling?

 

[Cattlegod]

a show on the discovery channel said we have ~ 4 terabytes of storage space.

 

[warcleric]

I dont know....but how many more things are you going to compare to CPU speed before you are a Senior Nef?

 

[potz]

i think i'm running out of space in my brain.

 

[joeyd]

well its simple if we times the nur..... what was the question again ??????

 

[StormRider]

Compare this to the way we would teach a computer to perform a visual recognition task: scan the entire image, performing complex edge detection routines. Using this information, determine those feature which are typically part of larger scale stuctures. Then perform a statistical analysis of these features to determing if they appear in a likely &quot;constellation.&quot; This entire algorithm may contain many millions of sequential steps.

Sounds like you took courses in computer vision recognition and neural networks!

We had to write a character recognition system and a program to reconstruct a 3D &quot;world&quot; from 2 stereoscopic cameras in the computer vision class I took awhile ago.

I always wanted to play around more with neural networks too. I want to design a neural network to help me pick out my stocks since I suck at it!