Salk researchers and collaborators have achieved critical insight into the size of neural connections, putting the memory capacity of the brain far higher than common estimates. The new work also answers a longstanding question as to how the brain is so energy efficient and could help engineers build computers that are incredibly powerful but also conserve energy.
"This is a real bombshell in the field of neuroscience," says Terry Sejnowski, Salk professor and co-senior author of the paper, which was published in eLife. "We discovered the key to unlocking the design principle for how hippocampal neurons function with low energy but high computation power. Our new measurements of the brain's memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web."
Our memories and thoughts are the result of patterns of electrical and chemical activity in the brain. A key part of the activity happens when branches of neurons, much like electrical wire, interact at certain junctions, known as synapses. An output 'wire' (an axon) from one neuron connects to an input 'wire' (a dendrite) of a second neuron. Signals travel across the synapse as chemicals called neurotransmitters to tell the receiving neuron whether to convey an electrical signal to other neurons. Each neuron can have thousands of these synapses with thousands of other neurons.
Nanoconnectomic upper bound on the variability of synaptic plasticity (10.7554/eLife.10778)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Friday January 22 2016, @06:32AM
all those crappy adverts taking up space....
I sometimes wonder if all my years of educations through PhD could be stored on a DVD - I mean, my thesis was 60MB PDF and 350 pages!
But with a computer, we can use our brains to simply remember the *way* to find something, rather than the actual thing.
This was what I learn in Engineering as an undergrad.
"Don't remember what you can derive. Don't derive what you can lookup".
Awesome advice...!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 22 2016, @07:34AM
I also pride myself in being able to problems with a given set of tools rather than being able to memorize thousands of APIs by heart :-) Like a database with stored procedures.
Sometimes, however, I wonder if this problem solving skill is not just a way to compensate for weak memory. Storing a procedure probably takes considerably less memory than all the data... I wonder, are intelligent people on average more forgetful?
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Friday January 22 2016, @08:03AM
Einstein had a reputation for forgetting things. [google.com].
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday January 22 2016, @08:35AM
I know I am...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Friday January 22 2016, @03:45PM
I might humbly suggest that intelligence is making connections where others do not.
Hence, the worry about AI possibly becoming dangerous. With instant recall of any collection of data, machines might make connections that may not be anticipated by humans...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @06:06PM
I am getting old and start forgetting things easily. Actually, my memory was not very good to begin with as I had more than 10 concussions over my life, some rather bad. Yeah, I was that kind of kid. But I had highest grades, maths high school, maths degree and so on and ended up just a software guy.
A few years ago I set up a bunch of tests for myself in an attempt to track problem solving abilities. I believe I am not loosing it, but even getting somewhat better. But memory is getting worse and overall it is much harder to keep up. Figuring things out is fun but slower than simple db lookup for most applications, especially for money earning ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @06:47AM
From the article:
Because the memory capacity of neurons is dependent upon synapse size,
So how do single celled creatures remember and decide on stuff if they don't have synapses?
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=450&cid=11384#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
The synapses are important but I think many scientists may be overlooking something.
My theory is that many single celled creatures can think and the problem the brain solved initially at least was not of thinking but of how to control a multicellular creature. You need multiple thinking cells for redundancy (can't have a whole multicellular body wasted just because a single cell died) and ease of attachment to stuff like nerves (which are actually very long neurons) and muscles.
Remember many of these single celled creatures can do fairly sophisticated stuff: http://bogology.org/what-we-do/in-the-lab/testate-amoebae/ [bogology.org] (note that different ones build different looking shells).
So I think it's likely the neuron itself can do some thinking and memorization
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday January 22 2016, @06:53AM
I strongly suspect it's at best a hypothesis.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @07:00AM
In practice there are different meanings for theory. See: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory [reference.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday January 22 2016, @12:47PM
In practice there are different meanings for theory. See: " rel="url2html-17878">http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory
But in theory......
Is a season 4 TNG episode.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 22 2016, @07:41AM
My theory is
I strongly suspect it's at best a hypothesis.
More like "guidelines", really. Cap'n Jack Sparrow
(It's barely a speculation. Vizzini)
"My, what big synapses you have!" Little Red Riding Hood, PhD
I, for one, and happy to have this much more storage space in the ol' noggin! Now if only I could remember where I left my keys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @07:55AM
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22462855 [bbc.com]
Plenty of complex behaviors can happen with no brain or neurons of any kind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @08:16AM
Plenty of complex behaviors can happen with no brain or neurons of any kind.
And Aristarchus is a case in point! Bada-Boom!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @08:45AM
In single celled organisms and many small multicellular organisms the term memory doesn't really mean the same thing as when we talk about memory in humans (or larger animals).
While their behaviour may appear complex it's often the result of a very simple set of rules, effectively an algorithm. Ant foraging behaviour is a good example of complex and highly effective behaviour emerging from simple pheramone following rules in a noisy system.
Generally when we talk about memory in these animals all we mean is tweaking the parameters of this algorithm not the emergence of new behaviour. This is memory in that an organisms behaviour is influenced by its history, but it isn't the same thing a person remembering where they left their keys, or how to play the piano.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @07:11PM
While their behaviour may appear complex it's often the result of a very simple set of rules, effectively an algorithm.
Same for most of the comments on internet forums or even the commenters themselves no? ;)
>90% of Stephen Hawking's behavior is as predictable as >90% of a single celled creature's behavior. It's the other percentage that's the interesting part...
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Friday January 22 2016, @11:03PM
I'm not so sure about that. Where do you draw the line between "a simple set of rules with some random noise" and "full sentience and recall"? How much of our own behaviour is actually simple? Probably the vast majority of it--think about how much you are doing all the time without any concious thought; from simple muscular action to complex but habitual reflexes, and skilled work.
From neuroscience lectures I've attended looking at the wiring of the ant nervous system, showing how pheremone receptors hook into pre-programmed actions via memory, essentially using a hardwired addressing system, it is the case that a lot of it is emergent behaviour, coupled with a simple memory to allow adaption of a fixed set of responses to unique stimuli. How the "mushroom body" functions, etc. There are some very interesting parallels to be drawn with computer systems here, including what could very well be an actual "memory bus". Clearly a person is vastly more complex; many orders of magnitude so. But are our brains fundamentally all that different? As you progress up the evolutionary ladder through fish, mammals have additional layers of complexity (size, folding), and a rather more plastic development process, but I would also suspect that the real core stuff will have been conserved through evolution.
For someone "remembering the location of their keys", how different is this from a response to a pheremone? It seems that the pheremone triggers the memory, which leads to an action. Could the trigger of "my key" lead to exactly the same thing, albeit at a more abstract level--the trigger and the response not being external physical events? Obviously I don't have an answer to that since we don't yet know, but over the last few years it's been really interesting that with e.g. the ability to visualise individual neurons firing in real-time, we can actually map out what's going on in simple systems under different conditions, which will inevitably lead to insights into how it works in ourselves. It will certainly be interesting once we can look at ourselves in detail; undoubtedly it will also provide some interesting philosophical insights as well! It's also interesting to see more details at the molecular level regarding e.g. exactly how synapse firing and resetting works with the structure of synaptotagmin and other molecules.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @12:43AM
It's not different, but you're making the mistake most people make. They elevate other things to the magical, grandiose level of a human rather than bringing the human down to the level of the things.
We're not special. Get over it.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:15PM
Huh, I said the exact opposite of what you are saying here.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:52AM
"full sentience" and "a simple set of rules and random noise" are not mutually exclusive. humans don't really have free will, we function based on algorithms running in our subconscious and body, via hormones and neurotransmitters, and then the left hemisphere produces a narrative out of whats already been decided - whether it makes sense or not, your brain will construct a narrative making you think it was your choice, and create some kind of rationalization for it, even though you really had no choice in it at all. after the choice has been made, then "free will" can come into play and you can reason your way into a better choice, such as lighting up a cigarette by habit and then suddenly realizing you're trying to quit, or heading to a bar to cheat on your wife but then realizing its a bad idea and turning around when you're halfway there.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday January 22 2016, @06:57AM
There are stories of people with 'photographic memories' and covert agents with an emphasis on similar retention levels. It seems those folks don't have a crap filter to set aside the daily noise of faces, street signs, license plates, and general errata that most of us have. If we can turn that filtering off somehow, minds like in the movie Limitless are possible.
I for one welcome our omni-remembering overlords.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday January 23 2016, @05:37AM
I've noticed this about myself... my crap filter is apparently tuned to "shit I care about". What interests me, I generally retain forever, if often poorly indexed. What's routine or I don't give a damn about goes in one eyeball and out the other faster than I can blink.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @07:04AM
The memory capacity of the brain is always quoted to be the size of the trendy storage device of the day. Twenty years ago when Zip disks were the chosen storage medium of elitist assholes, sciencey types swore they had proof that the human brain could store 100 MB of information, just like a Zip disk. What's a fucking Zip disk? Not trendy anymore. Now trendy morons like to think of Teh Web as their memory store. It's all bullshit.
(Score: 4, Funny) by GungnirSniper on Friday January 22 2016, @08:11AM
Sounds like someone's warez and p0rn collection disappeared into a click of death. [wikipedia.org]
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @08:36AM
"suck harder" "so stiff" [bit.ly]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @02:03PM
Wow.. Someone had a major case of Zip-Envy..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @02:37AM
I do not recall this belief at all... The numbers I've seen quoted were always very large.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday January 23 2016, @05:33AM
Human Being: 8TB RAM, 1PB storage
(not supported by current operating system)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @07:12AM
just think of how many TB one rectum could hold!
(Score: 2, Funny) by anubi on Friday January 22 2016, @11:21AM
1,587.5 TB [reddit.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @10:37AM
This idea has been opposed since its inception. Here is the 1906 nobel prize winner for neuroscience work going on a rant about it:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1906/golgi-lecture.html [nobelprize.org]
Here is the thing. If you carefully look at Gogli-Cox stained tissue ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgi%27s_method [wikipedia.org] ), you see tons of dendrodendritic connections. These are not exceptional in any way, they are everywhere. We also know cytoplasm can be continuous between two cells ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_junction [wikipedia.org] ). It should be no means be taken as fact that viewing the brain as a collection of neurons is the most productive approach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:57AM
Its not a 1:1. An axon connects to many dendrites of many second neurons.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @03:48PM
Sites can now start giving their users assigned randomly generated passwords instead of letting them come up with their own lame "123456" and "trustno1". Make use of that 10x user-side capacity.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 22 2016, @05:18PM
If you introduced yourself, I would be able to draw your portrait for the rest of your life, but I would forget your name the instant we parted. I figure it's neurological.
The only way I can remember names is to write them down in a notebook.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday January 22 2016, @05:40PM
considering the brain is purely a 3D network of an mindbogglingly large number of cells and evolution's propensity for optimization, i'd say it's closer to an exabyte than a petabyte.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Friday January 22 2016, @09:39PM
Even if you know the physical structure of a medium you cannot assess capacity without knowing how the info is encoded.
Unless these scientists are interested in the raw unformatted capacity, the usual marketing ploys. I guess the bastards use SI scale for mega and giga too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:01AM
we know its encoded in patterns, we just haven't deciphered all the patterns yet, but we're getting there [gizmodo.com].
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday January 23 2016, @12:40AM
How do you even measure human memory? If my brain forms a connection between "chocolate" and "that one time in elementary school", how much memory capacity does that represent? Ten bytes? Fifty bytes? Two and a half kilobytes?
How does recall play into measurement? If I have some memory that can only be recalled through acute psychological shock, is that included in the memory capacity measurement? Do we compromise and use the three-fifths rule?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by elixir on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:51AM
I read somewhere that the memory capacity of a human brain is infinite and cannot actually be calculated. This does not seem wrong to me, as I believe that the brain remembers everything it has seen or heard, regardless to if we have the ability to retrieve the memory ourselves.
Anyone care to prove otherwise?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:04AM
https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/professional/savant-syndrome/resources/articles/hyperthymestic-syndrome-extraordinary-memory-for-daily-life-events/ [wisconsinmedicalsociety.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:14AM
Whoops, misread what you were asking for, try this one [gizmodo.com] instead. Synaptic connections degrade when they're not used, and eventually disappear entirely. When you sleep, your brain reorganizes your memories of the day, strengthening important or significant memories and weakening (and eventually discarding) useless, mundane ones. Every time you recall a memory, the connection strengthens, but things you never recall are eventually forgotten due to synaptic degradation. You do not remember everything unless you're a memory savant or hyperthymestic. One of the key roles of the endocannabinoid system, the neurotransmitter anandamide, is letting you forget things [scientificamerican.com].