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Human brain vs Electronic storage

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imported_obgow

Junior Member
If you could measure the human brains memory storage how much would it be compared to current electronic storage? What would be the speed that memories could be read at vs a hard drive?
 
I have what is called an Eidetic memory . With the proper stimuli, I think I could recall millions of images from the last few weeks. Lots of little pieces of older images seem to be missing, but when a relative starts talking about something that we did in our youth, I can shut my eyes and it all comes back. Every detail. I can not recall ever coming up blank. I would hate to scan the capacity of 4 and 1/2 decades of life.

As for the speed, the old images come fairly slow, but replay instantly. Maybe my un-zip mechanism is a bit off.😉

The Indexing mechanism in the brain, now that would be fascinating stuff.

 
From personal experience I'd say the brain uses EXTREME amounts of loss compression. Think about it, when you think of a moment in your life, you think of one particular thing that happened and fabricate the environment, people, actions, and events that happened. They all grow from that single stored memory. If someone was wearing a red cap 2 weeks ago, you remember two things: cap and red, then you fabricate the image of a hat that you saw on the person. Note that the image your brain generates will not be correct at all regarding dimensions and may hardly resemble the actual image - however, your brain thinks it is an exact replication.

From the two stored words, red and cap, you are able to generate a full 3d image with great detail (however it is not very accurate). With a normal computer, greatly depending on the level of detail, it could take gigabytes (or more if it is really detailed) to store the full 3d image of a red hat. There are however, things that do compare to how the brain might generate images - have you ever seen those 64kb programs that contain full 3d worlds and allow you to explore them as a doom type game?

Just my .02, neat ideas to think about though.
 
i dont think you can put it in terms of bytes. there are billions upon billions of permutations for neuron connections and how many it takes to create one memory is unknown.
 
We do not know enough about the brain to really say for sure, so any estimate is just a guess. The most powerful and advanced computer in the world is sitting on our shoulders, and we still have much to learn about it. Now obviously we have machines that can do calculations faster in some areas, but I think the fact that we are having this conversation alone proves how amazing the brain is.
I suggest you do some research on your own, neuroscience is a fascinating field. You can check out "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker, if you have access to a library.
 
I'd guess that, in terms of raw data, the capacity of the human memory is about one byte. The rate that a brain can read the data is 8 bytes a day, but the speed slows down as you increase the size. There must be some benchmark we can run to test this.

While I think the brain has a whopping computing and storage capacity, it is difficult to quantify because it relies on things such as lossy compression. It also has a down time of 30%.
 
last night i was thinking about this question hopefully someone can answer it.... how fast is our brain? i mean like sending a command to move my pink finger? etc etc will is near the speed of light? i know its a dumb question but it puzzles me hopefully someone can shed some light for me thanks
 
you've probably heard of cases where a guy has got bonked on the head and can only remember what happen less than an hour ago or even thirty seconds. like in the movie "Memento". there are cases where a similar injury can lead to a person suddenly being able to remember everything, from the moment he got injured, very clearly. and i mean absolutely evrything, he cannot forget anything.

 
Originally posted by: TheFirm
last night i was thinking about this question hopefully someone can answer it.... how fast is our brain? i mean like sending a command to move my pink finger? etc etc will is near the speed of light? i know its a dumb question but it puzzles me hopefully someone can shed some light for me thanks
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I believe that the human brian can remember perfectly but the brian has divised a way to only remember what is important. Our brian receives a tremendous amount of stimuli every moment. If it doesn't sort out what is important and what is not it would be overwhelmed with information. This was my explanation to the girlfriend when she said I wasn't listening. 😉
 
This question cannot be answer at all.

People are good at remembering pictorial information but not numerical sequences. So to put it in terms of "bytes" is impossible
You might not even be able to remember pi to 100 decimal places no matter how long you practiced
Though there are special people with great ability in remembering numerical data.
Text however; which has meaning, are more easily remember by the brain

So There's just no point to ask this question at all. You might be able to remember 1000 short "video" of moments in your life
But you can't remember your old friends' telephone number. What's the capacity of your brain?
No it can't be answered.

But there are study that counts the number of neurons of your brain to be able to store 1 bit of data
In that case it translate to few megabytes.
Well but so? The number is insignificant, i.e. it's meaningless. It doesn't mean you can store 1000 000 binary digits in your brain and recall the sequence as well. That'd be impossible to even Albert Einstein.
 
Also, considering the fact that electric impulses in nerves travel at a speed of several hundred metres a second, the seek time is actually lower than a mechanical HDD, but no way near solid state memory. But that's an estimate since no scientist fully understand how information is written and retrieved in the brain.

If the mechanism is understood, future cyberobotic implants such as memory devices might be able to help a person to remember a whole enclyopedia in a few minutes.
 
The neurons are counted by the billions, and each neuron is connected to numerous other neurons.

I wonder if when people get to be older than they do now, if their capacity will be met? Like one day, a 160 year old guy suddenly runs out of space.

Though there might be enough space (if that theory can be applied at all) to last far longer than anyone could ever live.
 
Well, memory access is fairly easy to define. Even the shortest neural pathways take a few milliseconds, and functional neural responses for memory are often recorded within a few seconds (well, in my lab at least). So that at least can take a while longer.

As for the storage capacity, depends how you want to define it. A computer might store discrete bytes, but it's a lot harder to define a discrete memory for a person. How many sensory modalities or symbols would be included in a discrete memory?
 
I believe if we were to count it, it would be different for each person because we'd have to use relative units such as #s of songs or#s of pictures. Image folk like myself would have more image memory, but audio folk would have less visual memory and more audio memory.....my friend can remember just about everything said in his biology class, whereas if I am given a paragraph with a logical argument and examples and stuff I can read that once or twice and have it down pat.....but it takes him longer to grasp that stuff I think. Not exactly related, but it shows I'm more physical, discrete fact oriented (pictures and exact logical arguments), but he is more into the out there stuff....random names of things like in biology.

Or maybe that paragraph thing is how everyone is, and I was bad at biology cause I never paid attention?
Who knows.
 
Originally posted by: jongyoo
Some just give this man a simple answer (number) to keep him happy. I'm curious too
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100 bytes. 500 GB. any number you choose out of the blue would be just as nonsensical. human brain memory has very little in common with binary storage. this question cannot be answered.

CJ
 
Originally posted by: Stas
Brain is analog, not digital. 🙂
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If you look at action potentials, neurons are digital.
If you look at single synapses, neurons are analog.
If you look at neurotransmitter release, neurons are digital.
etc.

Incidently, the last number I heard quoted for neuron count numbered 100billion. However, some documented cases studied people with really tiny brains. These are literally so small as to be almost nonexistent. While mostly fatal or severely crippling, some patients actually functioned normally, with a few of above average intelligence.

Currently, asking for brain capacity is like asking about color. No way to prove a hypothesis, no way to disprove either.
 

As an easy example of why the question is not particularly meaningful - as far as I know more or less everyone is capable of remembering the content of a 1600x1200 32 bit color photograph in general terms after a single glance, some people are able to accurately visualise the entire photograph at will afterwards, but noone, given any amount of study, is capable of remembering the binary representation of a 320x200 image in 16 colors.

So, from that alone you can either decide that accurately remembering tens of thousands of 1600x1200 photographs means hundreds of gigabytes, or being unable to remember a 320x200x16 binary sequence means the entire human memory is less than 250 kilobytes.

Take your pick ;p
 
To reach this state of excellence, you must undergo advanced technical training and obtain the skill of extreme memory techniques found in private laboratories. Science explain that the human brain uses 10% of it's maximum functions.

When you remember a past memory in your life, you remember how it affected you first. To enable compression, you need to use codes to enable your memory to remember the artifacts and specific events.
-Environment, sprites, artifacts, etc. You need to have a list to map out the things of the incident.
-Then you have to be able to manipulate the situation in your head without distorting your thoughts.

Ofcourse this is only an example. Even the most highly trained Navy SEALs cannot accomplish this state of mind, and they undergo intense mental and physical training to the extremes.
To have your mind process information like what a computer can do, requires set patterns in which your mind will evolve in it's potential criterias of learning things more efficiently. Memory, processing and accuracy.

Then you have to acknoledge, that we are not robots, that we must learn to avoid the situations in life that put our mental, physical, and even spiritual minds at risk, which if not learned in time, will detract the mind from positive learning skills and less able to compensate with technical information.
 
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