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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: 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].