How many gbs do you think a fully matured brain can hold?

[myjaja]

Lets compare a brain to a hard drive... Do y'all think a brain can hold up to 400gbs?

 

[Atheus]

ATOT special answer.

 

[Quasmo]

I'm gonna say 6000000TB

 

[theprodigalrebel]

I remember lots of things from my life in HD-video quality and surround sound. How much space would that take?

 

[CityShrimp]

Obviously any number ending in 0 is suspicious.
I'll say 482741.35TB.
This is definitely the right answer since it has not 1 but 2 decimals!

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Pioneer Premier
Lets compare a brain and a hard drive... Do y'all think a brain can hold up to 400gbs?

Way, way , way, way, waaaaay more.

 

[spaceman]

the answer is 60gb



















shipped.

 

[BigJ]

It can store a whole lot. The problem is accessing the drive and a proper search implementation.

 

[vi edit]

Can't be compared. It's sort of the digital/analog argument. Analog simply adds an extra dimension to things that can't be quantified in digital terms.

Our brains store things that simply can not be measured in quantifiable manner.

 

[lobbyone]

400GB only? Probably more than just a tiny 400GB. A plus is that our brain doesn't spin at Raptor speeds!

 

[Schadenfroh]

I have memorized every song on my ipod (about 50gb of music on there) and I can play everyone of them from start to finish perfectly in my head.

I have enough room left over for all of my classes (Organic Chem, C++, Prob&Stat, Calc, etc.) My notes are about 100mb in .pdf format scanned in most likely.

Take into account memories (stored mostly in still frames, converted to .jpg) judging from the blurry pictures I see when I dream, I think they must be stored at 640X480 and blown up to fit my internal 1600x1200 mind, (I DO NOT DREAM IN WIDE SCREEN). The low resolution may also be due to my terrible vision (I wear .5 inch thick glasses)

I figure that is about 1gb of 640x480 .jpgs, if the audio (the voices) that I hear sometimes when awake or dreaming are compressed in .mp3, then that is probably about 10gb if you convert it into hour lengths. My guess (from the clarity) is that they are stored as 256k mp3s.

I do not forget that much, so I must still have plenty of room, but I cannot account for unused space, only unused.

 

[E equals MC2]

You can't compare them two. A simple 128 MB memory card can PERMANENTLY remember every words of the bible.

Your brain can't even memorize a pocket book. Memories aren't static nor is it accurate.

 

[ultimatebob]

Keanu Reeves said that he could easily hold 80 GB in his head in Johnny Mnemonic, 160 with a doubler. I think that he was having "seepage" problems in his brain during the movie because he was trying to hold over 300 GB... So I wouldn't recommend trying that

 

[So]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Can't be compared. It's sort of the digital/analog argument. Analog simply adds an extra dimension to things that can't be quantified in digital terms.

Our brains store things that simply can not be measured in quantifiable manner.

I'm sorry, but it totally doesn't: information theory is concrete. There is a specific amount of information that analog devices can hold. It's usually more than digital devices, but things like signal to noise ratio and detection thresholds define the amount of information that can be stored on an analog device, it's just not as easily or obviously described, but there is a concrete limit.

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
I remember lots of things from my life in HD-video quality and surround sound. How much space would that take?

That's a great point that I was going to make as well. It has to be Terabytes, not Gigabytes.

 

[spaceman]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
Keanu Reeves said that he could easily hold 80 GB in his head in Johnny Mnemonic, 160 with a doubler. I think that he was having "seepage" problems in his brain during the movie because he was trying to hold over 300 GB... So I wouldn't recommend trying that

lmfao.
can we print out stuff too?

 

[FoBoT]

42

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
Keanu Reeves said that he could easily hold 80 GB in his head in Johnny Mnemonic, 160 with a doubler. I think that he was having "seepage" problems in his brain during the movie because he was trying to hold over 300 GB... So I wouldn't recommend trying that

Hahaha, that movie sucked so bad that it rocked

 

[E equals MC2]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
I have memorized every song on my ipod (about 50gb of music on there) and I can play everyone of them from start to finish perfectly in my head.

I have enough room left over for all of my classes (Organic Chem, C++, Prob&Stat, Calc, etc.) My notes are about 100mb in .pdf format scanned in most likely.

Take into account memories (stored mostly in still frames, converted to .jpg) judging from the blurry pictures I see when I dream, I think they must be stored at 640X480 and blown up to fit my internal 1600x1200 mind, (I DO NOT DREAM IN WIDE SCREEN). The low resolution may also be due to my terrible vision (I wear .5 inch thick glasses)

I figure that is about 1gb of 640x480 .jpgs, if the audio (the voices) that I hear sometimes when awake or dreaming are compressed in .mp3, then that is probably about 10gb if you convert it into hour lengths. My guess (from the clarity) is that they are stored as 256k mp3s.

I do not forget that much, so I must still have plenty of room, but I cannot account for unused space, only unused.

640 x 480? Incorrect. Do you really think your brain can conjur up every pixel of an 640 x 480 image? I don't think so. It vaguely remebers things.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Can't be compared. It's sort of the digital/analog argument. Analog simply adds an extra dimension to things that can't be quantified in digital terms.

Our brains store things that simply can not be measured in quantifiable manner.

I'm sorry, but it totally doesn't: information theory is concrete. There is a specific amount of information that analog devices can hold. It's usually more than digital devices, but things like signal to noise ratio and detection thresholds define the amount of information that can be stored on an analog device, it's just not as easily or obviously described, but there is a concrete limit.

Found it! From wikipedia:

Shannon?Hartley theorem

The Shannon?Hartley theorem establishes what that channel capacity is, for a finite-bandwidth continuous-time channel subject to Gaussian noise. It connects Hartley's result with Shannon's channel capacity theorem in a form that is equivalent to specifying the M in Hartley's information rate formula in terms of a signal-to-noise ratio, but achieving reliability through error-correction coding rather than through reliably distinguishable pulse levels.

If there were such a thing as an infinite-bandwidth, noise-free analog channel, one could transmit unlimited amounts of error-free data over it per unit of time. Real channels, however, are subject to limitations imposed by both finite bandwidth and nonzero noise.

So how do bandwidth and noise affect the rate at which information can be transmitted over an analog channel?

Surprisingly, bandwidth limitations alone do not impose a cap on maximum information rate. This is because it is still possible for the signal to take on an indefinitely large number of different voltage levels on each symbol pulse, with each slightly different level being assigned a different meaning or bit sequence. If we combine both noise and bandwidth limitations, however, we do find there is a limit to the amount of information that can be transferred by a signal of a bounded power, even when clever multi-level encoding techniques are used.

In the channel considered by the Shannon-Hartley theorem, noise and signal are combined by addition. That is, the receiver measures a signal that is equal to the sum of the signal encoding the desired information and a continuous random variable that represents the noise. This addition creates uncertainty as to the original signal's value. If the receiver has some information about the random process that generates the noise, one can in principle recover the information in the original signal by considering all possible states of the noise process. In the case of the Shannon-Hartley theorem, the noise is assumed to be generated by a Gaussian process with a known variance. Since the variance of a Gaussian process is equivalent to its power, it is conventional to call this variance the noise power.

Such a channel is called the Additive White Gaussian Noise channel, because Gaussian noise is added to the signal; "white" means equal amounts of noise at all frequencies within the channel bandwidth. Such noise can arise both from random sources of energy and also from coding and measurement error at the sender and receiver respectively. Since sums of independent Gaussian random variables are themselves Gaussian random variables, this conveniently simplifies analysis, if one assumes that such error sources are also Gaussian and independent.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
Keanu Reeves said that he could easily hold 80 GB in his head in Johnny Mnemonic, 160 with a doubler. I think that he was having "seepage" problems in his brain during the movie because he was trying to hold over 300 GB... So I wouldn't recommend trying that

Hahaha, that movie sucked so bad that it rocked

I think that they needed to use a mutant Dolphin to get the data out of his head, too. Not exactly the easiest interface device to find

 

[myjaja]

Our best possible guess of the average human brain's capacity would by calculating using the number of synapses connecting the neurons in the human brain. Because each of the synapses have different molecular states, we estimate each of them to be capable holding one megabyte worth of memory. Since the brain has 100-trillion-synapses, we can safely say that the average brain can hold about 100 million megabytes of memory !!!

http://library.thinkquest.org/C001501/the_saga/compare2.htm

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Can't be compared. It's sort of the digital/analog argument. Analog simply adds an extra dimension to things that can't be quantified in digital terms.

Our brains store things that simply can not be measured in quantifiable manner.

I'm sorry, but it totally doesn't: information theory is concrete. There is a specific amount of information that analog devices can hold. It's usually more than digital devices, but things like signal to noise ratio and detection thresholds define the amount of information that can be stored on an analog device, it's just not as easily or obviously described, but there is a concrete limit.

I'm not getting into an argument about the storage capacities of analog vs. digital. I'm simply saying that our brains work in a similar manner of comparison.

How do you put a storage size on emotions during a time, or how something felt when you touched it, or how an apple pie smells when you make it vs after it is cooked?

How do you put a bandwith processing number on the rendering that our various sensory organs feedback to our brains? The answer is you can't.

That's what makes us "alive" instead binary.

There simply are things that you can't describe with 0's and 1's.

 

[irishScott]

There are theories that state that we never truely forget anything (The data is in our brains, we just can't access it).

Yet my psychology text says that while the exact limit can never be measured in familiar terms, it's approximately only a few hundred MB.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: vi_edit

Originally posted by: So

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Can't be compared. It's sort of the digital/analog argument. Analog simply adds an extra dimension to things that can't be quantified in digital terms.

Our brains store things that simply can not be measured in quantifiable manner.

I'm sorry, but it totally doesn't: information theory is concrete. There is a specific amount of information that analog devices can hold. It's usually more than digital devices, but things like signal to noise ratio and detection thresholds define the amount of information that can be stored on an analog device, it's just not as easily or obviously described, but there is a concrete limit.

I'm not getting into an argument about the storage capacities of analog vs. digital. I'm simply saying that our brains work in a similar manner of comparison.

How do you put a storage size on emotions during a time, or how something felt when you touched it, or how an apple pie smells when you make it vs after it is cooked?

How do you put a bandwith processing number on the rendering that our various sensory organs feedback to our brains? The answer is you can't.

That's what makes us "alive" instead binary.

There simply are things that you can't describe with 0's and 1's.

See my second post...information is information. Recollections of emotions are data all the same. Just because we WANT emotions to be 'special' doesn't make them so. The whole breakthrough of the "information age" is the realization that ALL information can be stored in various ways, and that an arbitrary information system can be constructed to store data of drastically different types. The memory of the various chemical compounds wafting off a freshly baked apple pie is information nonetheless. And that does nothing to detract from its beauty or elegance.

Edit: and you certainly can describe the bandwidth of the human nervous system.