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Traffic Jams In Your Brain

Posted by timothy on from the call-mine-the-concentrator dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Carl Zimmer's latest foray into neuroscience examines why the brain can get jammed up by a simple math problem: 'Its trillions of connections let it carry out all sorts of sophisticated computations in very little time. You can scan a crowded lobby and pick out a familiar face in a fraction of a second, a task that pushes even today's best computers to their limit. Yet multiplying 357 by 289, a task that demands a puny amount of processing, leaves most of us struggling.' Some scientists think mental tasks can get stuck in bottlenecks because everything has to go through a certain neural network they call 'the router.'"

5 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Router eh? by MrQuacker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have they tried unplugging it, waiting 30 seconds, and plugging it back in?

    1. Re:Router eh? by fyngyrz · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes, hello sir, my name is Rasheed. I understand your router is down. Can you tell me what lights are on on your modem? No Modem? Hmm. Let me call my supervisor.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  2. Re:Pulling it between layers of abstraction. by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Funny

    The brain arguably is man-made.

    I think you'll find there's usually a woman involved in the process too. :)

    --

    Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
  3. Re:That was easy! by RoverDaddy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Opening a calculator? I remember when calculators were physical things that you could flip upside down so they read '8008135'.

    --
    RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
  4. Re:Pulling it between layers of abstraction. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Using their GPU for computing?