Re:First of all, we don't even bother to store it.
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Son of HAL For Sale
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Well, there are about 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) neurons in an adult human brain, with an average of avout 1,000 axonal connections per neuron. This gives 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) "weights" in each of our neural nets (as I'm sure everyone knows, the functions of the brain are carried out on the axons, not the neurons themselves). One hundred trillion is a rather large number, and each connection is analog of course, not merely digital, but no matter how you look at it, that is a rather finite and non-infinite amount of storage and processing capacity.
Last I'd read, the human eye has a resoultion of around 2000x2000 (based on the number of nerve endings on the retina), and for the most part doesn't have a refresh rate greater than 30 fps. Assuming that each of the 100 trillion axons is used purely for memory storage (which isn't true, lots of them are used for processing), and each analog axon can hold the biological equivalent of a kilobyte (which seems possible, 1000 degrees of differentiation in a tiny biological fiber is on the high-end, IMHO).
2000x2000x4-byte colorx30fps = 480MB/s of visual information to store in our brains. If we have 100 quadrillion bytes available (100 trillion x 1000 bytes per axon) that gives us...
100,000,000,000,000,000 / 480,000,000 = 208333333.333 seconds of storage available, per brain. That comes out to about 6.6 years, using many assumptions that are wildly generous, and completely neglecting all the other input we receive, and the axons that need to be used for processing and not pure storage.
And yes, processing and storage overlap, and this is rather simplified, but hey, I was curious as to how the numbers would work out:)
In any event, it seems highly unlikely that the human brain is capable of permanently storing every sensory input ever encountered (in addition to all the other reasons others have mentioned).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there are about 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) neurons in an adult human brain, with an average of avout 1,000 axonal connections per neuron. This gives 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) "weights" in each of our neural nets (as I'm sure everyone knows, the functions of the brain are carried out on the axons, not the neurons themselves). One hundred trillion is a rather large number, and each connection is analog of course, not merely digital, but no matter how you look at it, that is a rather finite and non-infinite amount of storage and processing capacity.
:)
Last I'd read, the human eye has a resoultion of around 2000x2000 (based on the number of nerve endings on the retina), and for the most part doesn't have a refresh rate greater than 30 fps. Assuming that each of the 100 trillion axons is used purely for memory storage (which isn't true, lots of them are used for processing), and each analog axon can hold the biological equivalent of a kilobyte (which seems possible, 1000 degrees of differentiation in a tiny biological fiber is on the high-end, IMHO).
2000x2000x4-byte colorx30fps = 480MB/s of visual information to store in our brains. If we have 100 quadrillion bytes available (100 trillion x 1000 bytes per axon) that gives us...
100,000,000,000,000,000 / 480,000,000 = 208333333.333 seconds of storage available, per brain. That comes out to about 6.6 years, using many assumptions that are wildly generous, and completely neglecting all the other input we receive, and the axons that need to be used for processing and not pure storage.
And yes, processing and storage overlap, and this is rather simplified, but hey, I was curious as to how the numbers would work out
In any event, it seems highly unlikely that the human brain is capable of permanently storing every sensory input ever encountered (in addition to all the other reasons others have mentioned).