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

[Aquaman]

Eleventie Billion

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[NanoStuff]

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.

Any analog system can be measured in a 'quantifiable' manner. It's only a matter of with how much precision you want to 'measure' it.

Originally posted by: vi_edit
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.

You may have to have a fundamental grasp of information theory to understand this, but a digital system CAN describe and represent any analog system to any degree of precision desired, given resources. How much information is required to do this I don't personally know, but I do know that there are people that have a good estimate. There are comprehensive models of a number of regions of the brain, some of which IBM intends to simulate in the near future. If you really want to know, I'm sure a friendly email to the folks at blue brain could provide an answer.

Originally posted by: irishScott
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.

Your psychology text is unfortunately quackery. The amount of digital data required to represent a brain state goes at least into the terabyte range, but quite likely petabytes uncompressed. There is a scientifically established estimation which I've read about, but I don't recall the exact number, I'll try and find the text. But it's definitely much more than a few hundred MB. And BTW yes we do forget, the brain only maintains symbolic representations of what it deems significant, and many different scenes can be represented by the same symbolic pattern. Consider it a very efficient form of lossy compression.

Originally posted by: BigDH01
I don't think the brain can be quantified into areas that "store" and areas that "execute."

That's absolutely correct. Synaptic information storage sits on the same neurons that process that information... basically. Information is implicitly derived by the action potential that synaptic electrical resistance represents, in fact it's a system based on probability because the same sensory information may or may not trigger the same neuron twice, however it may be more or less likely to trigger the same neuron twice. It's chaotic on a low level but very deterministic as a system. Almost comparable to quantum chaos forming a very stable universe. Or flipping a coin many times, if you do it once it could go either way, but if you do it a billion times, the result will be a very predictable ~50/50%

 

[So]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

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.

Any analog system can be measured in a 'quantifiable' manner. It's only a matter of with how much precision you want to 'measure' it.

Originally posted by: vi_edit
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.

You may have to have a fundamental grasp of information theory to understand this, but a digital system CAN describe and represent any analog system to any degree of precision desired, given resources. How much information is required to do this I don't personally know, but I do know that there are people that have a good estimate. There are comprehensive models of a number of regions of the brain, some of which IBM intends to simulate in the near future. If you really want to know, I'm sure a friendly email to the folks at blue brain could provide an answer.

Originally posted by: irishScott
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.

Your psychology text is unfortunately quackery. The amount of digital data required to represent a brain state goes at least into the terabyte range, but quite likely petabytes uncompressed. There is a scientifically established estimation which I've read about, but I don't recall the exact number, I'll try and find the text. But it's definitely much more than a few hundred MB. And BTW yes we do forget, the brain only maintains symbolic representations of what it deems significant, and many different scenes can be represented by the same symbolic pattern. Consider it a very efficient form of lossy compression.

Originally posted by: BigDH01
I don't think the brain can be quantified into areas that "store" and areas that "execute."

That's absolutely correct. Synaptic information storage sits on the same neurons that process that information... basically. Information is implicitly derived by the action potential that synaptic electrical resistance represents, in fact it's a system based on probability because the same sensory information may or may not trigger the same neuron twice, however it may be more or less likely to trigger the same neuron twice. It's chaotic on a low level but very deterministic as a system. Almost comparable to quantum chaos forming a very stable universe. Or flipping a coin many times, if you do it once it could go either way, but if you do it a billion times, the result will be a very predictable ~50/50%

:beer:

Thanks for summing it up. I have the information theory down but I don't have a good grasp on the details of the brain itself.

 

[Xyclone]

Originally posted by: BigJ
It can store an infinite amount. The problem is accessing the drive and a proper search implementation.

fixed

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: So
:beer:

Thanks for summing it up. I have the information theory down but I don't have a good grasp on the details of the brain itself.

Fascinating stuff. It's remarkable how much is being understood in recent years. In fact they can already very literally 'see' through the eyes of a rat by recording it's visual cortex response. They can also restore(partially) defective memory formation due to a defective hippocampus by implanting a prosthetic. And BTW the prosthetic device is a digital processor, which only emphasized the fact that a digital process can simulate the brain. Numenta is a very recent company (2005) that started working on a neocortically inspired memory system, largely due to recent research that managed to create a mathematical formula of how it works. Essentially, it will organize information very much like a brain does, the idea being that if the system is successful it could potentially have human-level learning capabilities. They're by far not the only ones working on it however, but they're amongst the few that have available funding into the billions of dollars. But when it comes to paradigmal breakthroughs, history has shown it's 5% money, 95% concept, so it's anyone's game at this point.

It seems to me that the entire brain is likely to be modelled within 20 years at this pace. So much for nature's secret. There's certainly lots of hope that the now profoundly retarded and brain dead are yet to walk, talk and learn.

 

[mrkun]

Originally posted by: 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.

Don't some Muslims memorize the entire Koran?

 

[Motek]

Originally posted by: mrkun

Originally posted by: 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.

Don't some Muslims memorize the entire Koran?

Yes they do.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: BigJ
It can store a whole lot. The problem is accessing the drive and a proper search implementation.

:thumbsup:

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: 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.

Agreed.

 

[mikej007]

I thought I had heard the estimate was 17TB. It's hard to guess I suppose, because how can you estimate how much "space" the smell of roses takes up (20kb?) or the sound of broken glass (100kb?). When you factor in all the different senses (all the smells, sights, sounds, tastes, feels, etc) in addition to memories, that's a load of data.

 

[bignateyk]

Well since our brain doesnt really work anything like a harddrive, im gonna just go ahead and say eleventy billion MB

 

[AMCRambler]

No fully matured brains on ATOT. You came to the wrong place to ask this, lol.

 

[TXHokie]

Don't know how much memomy but all I know is God must've gone cheap on me and used Maxtor drives since I can't freaking get any data back when I need it most.

 

[Malladine]

a billion billion gb
easy

 

[archiloco]

Originally posted by: TXHokie
Don't know how much memomy but all I know is God must've gone cheap on me and used Maxtor drives since I can't freaking get any data back when I need it most.

haha, i think it's very much a finite number of memories/experiences before you start to get them all confused upon each other, can't really quantify it to HD space, though because your brain is far more complex than an HD.