Brain Still Has A Bit More Memory Than Computers
from the just-a-bit dept
While a computer may be able to function a bit better than the human brain on some tasks, it seems that the human brain isn’t likely to be surpassed in memory capacity any time soon. A new study has pointed out that the human brain has a staggering about of memory capacity. The article suggests the largest computer memories can store around 10 to the power of 12 bytes. The human brain, though, can handle 10 to the power of 8,432 bytes. In other words, a hell of a lot more. The study actually tried to go into more detail about the way the human brain records memory – which suggests the brain can handle significantly more than what many others had assumed previously. The article also points out that this new work may be useful in teaching computers how to record more information by focusing on the connections between the information (like the brain does) rather than just storing it. More evidence that plenty of intelligence is in the connections and pattern matching, as opposed to just the data alone.
Comments on “Brain Still Has A Bit More Memory Than Computers”
Children are less intelligent than cats
The average human 2-year-old will not recognize its own mother if its mother goes away for a week. Just ask my girlfriend, she lives with 3 little kids — she visited me for a week, went home, the toddler who just turned 2 didn’t recognize her. (And the older kids are doing well in school, they are not tards.)
My cat, though, sniffed a used birth control device, got angry, and attacked both of us. The next morning, she played a weird psych technique on us by opening the closet door in the bedroom in the morning. That’s in addition to her athletic feat of running vertically up a wall the other day.
Re: Children are less intelligent than cats
I forgot to mention that after the cat opened the closet door, she jumped on my girlfriend’s back.
10^8432 is much too large
The reported value of more than 10^8432 bits is truly gargantuan. As an estimate of the storage capacity of the human brain it is almost certainly incorrect. Perhaps the reporter has somehow misinterpreted the researcher’s results? For comparison, there are only on the order of 10^80 atoms and 10^90 photons in the entire observable universe.
Similarly, recently physicists have speculated that the total storage capacity of the universe is on the order of 10^120 bits. Since human brains are a part of the universe, any estimate of the storage capacity of a human brain is suspect if it exceeds the total storage capacity of the universe.
Re: 10^8432 is much too large
well, the physicists are naively just figuring out how much stuff there is to make a bit out of, and saying that the number of potential physical bits is the amount of available memory. not surprisingly, the neuroscientists aren’t just counting the number of neurons in the brain (merely 100 billion) as on/off bits, but instead saying that vastly many more states are possible when you sum up all the different potential interconnection states. each of those 100 billion nerves has several thousand axons connecting it to other nerves. that’s a LOT of possible states of connection.
i doubt we have the math or the computational capacity to compute how many states the universe can contain, when you account for interconnections amongst its constituents.
Re: Re: 10^8432 is much too large
John, the physicists are not being naive. The estimate of the 10^120 bit storage capacity of the observable universe isn’t based on anything as crude as just figuring out how much stuff there is out of which to make a bit, instead it is based on the entropy of the universe. Entropy limits information storage capacity, irrespective of the encoding method, so it doesn’t matter whether the human brain stores bits in neutrons or in the patterns of interconnected axons.
If you are curious, you can read more about the relationship between information and entropy in the Scientific American article article “Information in the Holographic Universe.”
Please ban Dorpus
Once again he’s posting inane and highly inaccurate information.
A substantial portion of an infant’s congnizant capabilities is directly related to facial recognition, especially of it’s mother. Don’t take my word for it, ask any pediatrician or psychologist.
Basic facial recognition is a very important part of all intelligent people’s (leaving out people like Dorpus) brains. People who can not recognize other people’s faces have serious mental disabilities (see Dr. Oliver Sack’s “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For His Hat” for additional information).
Re: Please ban Dorpus
“A substantial portion of an infant’s congnizant capabilities is directly related to facial recognition, especially of it’s mother.”
That’s interesting, because infants have pretty poor vision. Do you have documentation for experiments in which infants were isolated from their mothers for a week? Do adoptive children magically remember their biological mothers?
From http://isaac.exploratorium.edu/jaxxx/memory.html:
But Loftus’ research doesn’t stop there. Working with her students, she has created whole memories, as detailed as Piaget’s memory of the attempted kidnapping. The mother of eight-year-old Brittany, under the guise of telling an interesting bit of family folklore, suggested to Brittany that she had been lost in a condominium complex when she was five. According to Brittany’s mother, Brittany had been found by a nice old lady who gave her a cookie.
Brittany accepted the story and ran with it. A couple of weeks later, interviewed by a friend of the family under a pretext, Brittany provided details about that imagined time that she was lost. She remembered that there were pumpkins around, and hay, that the old lady had made cookies; she remembered the exact words that her mother had said when she found them: “Thank goodness I found you, I was looking all over for you.”
Another student of Loftus’ provided Chris, his 14-year-old brother, with one-paragraph written descriptions of four childhood events, one of which was false. (The false event was that Chris had been lost in the shopping mall when he was five.) Over the next five days, Chris wrote about whatever details he could remember about all four events, adding details to his “memories.”
A few weeks later, Chris was asked to describe each event and rate the clarity of each memory on a scale of 1 (not clear at all) to 11 (very, very clear). The shopping mall memory got his second-highest rating, number 8. He could describe being lost in detail.
Finally, Chris was told that one of his memories was false. When asked which one he thought it was, he chose one of the real memories. When told that the shopping mall memory was fabricated, he had a hard time believing it.
Other researchers have produced similar results. Dr. Stephen Ceci and his colleagues asked preschool children about things that had happened to them and, in the same conversation, about something that had never happened: for instance, the time they got a finger caught in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital to get the trap off. Once a week, for ten weeks, the children were asked to think hard about the events and try to imagine them. Finally, the children were asked about the imaginary events.
More than half the children remembered the made-up events, complete with details about how the mousetrap got on their finger and what had happened at the hospital.
I Never Forget a Face
themselves; they get confused about the nature of reality. But you’re an adult and (despite your taste in reading) you know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Well, adults get confused too.
Consider, for instance, the experience of memory researcher Donald Thomson. Thomson appeared on a television show on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Not long after the show aired, he was picked up by the police and placed in a lineup. A distraught woman identified him as the rapist who had attacked her.
Thomson had an unshakable alibi–the rape had occurred when he was on TV, describing how people could improve their ability to remember faces. The victim had been watching Thomson on TV before the rape, and had confused her memory of Thomson with her memory of the rapist.
Memory researcher Daniel L. Schacter links this case with what he calls source memory, the ability to recall precisely when and where an event occurred. The rape victim remembered Thomson’s face, but misremembered where she had seen it.
Re: Please ban Dorpus
From http://skepdic.com/memory.html:
“Long-term memory requires elaborative encoding in the inner part of the temporal lobes. If the left inferior prefrontal lobe is damaged or undeveloped, there will be grave difficulty with elaborative encoding. This area of the brain is undeveloped in very young children (under the age of three). Hence, it is very unlikely that any story of having a memory of life in the cradle or in the womb is accurate. The brains of infants and very young children are capable of storing fragmented memories, however. Such memories cannot be explicit or deeply encoded, but they can nevertheless have influence. In fact, there are numerous situations–such as cryptomnesia– where memory can be manifested without awareness of remembering.”