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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: 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.