Ask A Scientist© Computer Science Archive

Index Key:   CSI011
Author:      Brian Lintz
Subject:     Brain Storage?  Megabytes Gigabytes
Text:        What is the Human Brain's storage capacity in bytes?  Megabytes, 
Gigabytes, Google-Bytes?

Response #: 1 of 2
Author:     Psych
Text:       I would like to point out that, from a technical point of view, 
there is no answer to your question because the brain is not organized like a 
PC.  Although there are discrete locations conventionally defined as bytes in 
a PC, this is not true of a brain.  Since the brain uses a neural net model, 
it might make sense to ask, "How many discrete pieces of information can a 
brain hold?"  Like fuzzy logic this is a fuzzy number because it depends on 
how accurately you want that brain to recall this discrete info.  There has 
been some research on  neural nets on this, given so many neurons and an 
expected percentage, how many different states can you train the net to 
respond to?  Sorry though, I cannot tell you exactly what the research has 
found.

Response #: 2 of 2
Author:     Eric Owen Peterson
Text:       Kudos on the above answer to this interesting question!  In fact, 
it is even more correct than many will realize.  Several years ago, Hughes 
Research announced that their Neural Net research had been able to assimilate 
a single neuron as we understood them at the time.  It was stated that this 
neuron "clone" required the full time services of three SC's (I do not 
remember make or model).  The research did, however, conclude that questions 
such as brain memory  capacity and speed could no longer practically be 
defined in our conventional terms.  This neural net experiment and research 
was done on simple object recognition from alternate distances and angles.  I 
will try to get the publication name and date (I believe it was a trade 
publication for aerospace subcontractors for Hughes), and get back to you.  It 
was a very interesting piece.  -- dipper