..i understand that Shannon (1949?) tried to figure out how much brain matter was used for the memory bank..and was forced to the absurdity that only three months of observations (memory) could be recorded. Obviously he had one or more false assumptions. Any clue as to which ones?
"Robert Baer"
** Nice question.Likely he falsely assumed the human brain was anaolgous to a sampling recorder when it ain't.
Reality is - it's mostly more like a careless and capricious shorthand note taker with ADHD and scrawly writing.
.... Phil
A vague impression I have from general reading is that, for long-term storage, the brain uses compression algorithms we have not yet begun to understand.
On a sunny day (Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:25:16 -0800) it happened Robert Baer wrote in :
I had this idea long time ago: It seems brain cells do not divide / renew. So the DNA in brain cells is not used / needed. Then it *could* be that data is stored as bits in DNA like strings in each neuron. Because, what would you do if you had a huge storage medium available to you and you needed to store a lot of data? Use it. Nature is clever, hardly ever wastes anything. But this is not my field obviously... but from a philosophical point of view it should be investigated. The idea can be reversed: 'Because DNA is used for storage in neurons, those can not divide'.
Right on the first half. Wrong on the second.
Do you EVER make a statement that is not totally retarded?
neuron.
No, your memory is stored in the grime on your hands from jacking off so much.
Bwuahahahahahaha! It goes beyond that.
You're an idiot.
Absolutely true, which is why memories are such liers, and worthless in court cases!
DNA is used continually in every cell in the body for metabolism, i.e. just staying alive, by directing the synthesis and regulation of RNA, proteins and enzymes.
h neuron.
The brain is not digital computer. Some aspects of it are discrete, such as the sequence of bases in DNA, which does not normally change but whose activity is controlled by the presence of regulatory molecules.
The medium of "storage" is still unclear, but one change that occurs is the installation of new receptors in cellular membranes, which appears modifiy the long-term sensitivity to particular neurotransmitters. Again, some digital aspects, but largely still "analog"
People are still trying to equate brains to computation, but the more we discover about the brain the less it looks like a digital computer. The reality is that NO natural system is equivalent to a computer. Computers are essentially mathematical models - the only things they are equivalent to are other mathematical models.
-- Joe
Since DNA hadn't been discovered yet, he had no idea of the storage mechanism. He may have assumed one bit per neuron, something like that. Probably one neuron can store *lots* of bits, perhaps even entire facts, memories, or images. A one-cell bacteria can learn things, and that cell isn't even specialized for memory functions.
The very fact that neurons store information, probably chemically, perhaps in DNA, has Lamarckian implications.
John
Jan Panteltje:
Wrong, as Mr Legris alreasy said.
Except for the conspicuous spending used to attract potential sexual partners. Please read "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" by C. Darwin, or the more modern "The Mating Mind" by G. Miller.
The human brain, as the peacock's tail, was made, and has been used for
90.000 of our 100.000 years, just to court women, so there is nothing economical in it.John Larkin:
The synapses store the information, so a single neuron can't store anything.
Surely chemically, by the amount of neurotrasmitters stored in the synapses. By the way, an italian researcher has found why we sleep.
There is nothing mysterious about the brain. It works exactly as a neural network. The "magic" is due to the huge amount of synapses, 10**14, about
7.000 for each neuron.
Moreover there are computer models of synase based connection machines that can at present just about emulate the computational power of an insect brain. And they are advancing at a fair rate of knots.
Someone from IBM did claim to have a neural network equivalent to the cortex of a cat last year but was quickly debunked.
However, even though that announcement was premature the simulations are not that far off. And people have also perfected the transpose of connecting living brain cells to electronic substrates.
Not only the number of synapses, but also the incredibly high number of permutations of interconnects that are possible within the network. The information is stored in the pattern of synapse connections out of the myriad possibilities. There is even some redundancy.
Functional MRI is begining to shed light on how some of the higher functions work. GM level players analysing chess puzzles have a significantly different brain pattern to beginners and amateurs - the former can harness both sides of the brain to solve the task faster. Beginners can only do the simple logical analysis. The game involves far more spatial pattern matching than brute force calculation.
I don't think it will be too long now before we see computers that can pass the Turing test with flying colours. There are plenty of internet trolls that would convincingly fail that test too!
Regards, Martin Brown
The Blue Brain project models neural systems at the biochemical level.
"A longer term goal is to build a detailed, functional simulation of the physiological processes in the human brain: "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project said in 2009 at the TED conference in Oxford.[4] In a BBC World Service interview he said: "If we build it correctly it should speak and have an intelligence and behave very much as a human does."[4]"
However, it will probably need an exascale computer to run on.
-- Dirk http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - My new book - Magick and Technology
You can't possibly know that. Nobody does. And "synapses store the information" doesn't say much anyhow.
An electronic neural network is a crude parody of how some people think the brain might work. In the real world, NNs are pretty much useless.
John
Just to court women? What about hunting? Designing electronics?
John
John Larkin:
Yes I do.
Yes we do.
It does, if you know how a neural network works.
Just because they are too little. Quantity sometimes becomes quality. Look at how the cahotic quantum world becomes, at a bigger scale, our world, where you will never tunnel through a wall.
Another reading recommendation: "Goedel, Escher & Bach", by Douglas Hofstadter.
John Larkin:
Yes.
That was just to court women, not for gaining calories. Most of the food was gathered or hunted by women. Rodents, berries and roots. Otherwise we wpuld have been exclusively carnivore.
In the last 10.000 years the human brain was used for even more useful and complex stuff. But it remains its main purpose. If you compare how much some love songs composers or performers gain with a top EE wage, it's clear what's the most sought-after ability.
All the other tasks are optionals, humanity survived for ages without it, but it could not survive a single day (well, let sat few decades) without mating.
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