21–30 of 55 posts
I wonder how this would compare against quantum computing, as that allows maximum parallelism too if in correct.
How many milliseconds does it take for one layer of neurons to adjust its output? Let's call this number X. Can we conclude that if a task takes a human Y milliseconds, then a neural network with Y/X layers is sufficient for that task?
AIUI/AIBT there aren't really discrete layers in brains and even the same type of neuron can act in very different ways, so I wouldn't be surprised if this question doesn't translate to brains.
"a professional tennis player can follow the trajectory of a tennis ball after it is served at a speed as high as 160 miles per hour" This is false or at least highly misleading. A reader might imagine that the player's eyes track the ball in flight. This is not what happens. A pro player reads the position of the serve and begins moving before the ball is hit. The predictive power of the brain is much more important…
The way other articles describe it, a pro player is not really aware of the incoming ball, lower level non-conscious (reflex) systems track the environment and react before you are aware of it, just like when a regular person dodges a sudden obstacle coming at them and only a bit later they realize what's going on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way other articles describe it, a pro player is not really aware of the incoming ball, lower level non-conscious (reflex) systems track the environment and react before you are aware of it, just like when a regular person dodges a sudden obstacle coming at them and only a bit later they realize what's going on.
That's a meaningless distinction when talking about the brain. The brain is very much doing calculations that we are not aware of, but they still occur.
Given the recent discoveries about neurons using mRNA capsids to communicate [0] it's not that farfetched to posit that we are really dna computers [1]. The processing time (for new problems) seems human-like: "The slow processing speed of a DNA-computer (the response time is measured in minutes, hours or days, rather than milliseconds)"
The evolutionary argument: as DNA computing is already used by microbes [2] how could the nervous system made of (relatively) dumb neurons compete with that? Synapses still make sense - as a way to request a rna packet and/or inform that it's coming and from where.
One neuron with capability of ~10M pattern matches per second (encoded in dna/rna) would mean that the human brain executes ~2^60 pattern-matching operations per second, utilizing zettabytes of imperfectly copied data. Enough to brute force its way through lots of problems.
Memory as dna would explain high-level memory quirks: each read would be destructive, by splitting dna into rna, interacting with other rna under the presence of appropriate enzymes, then copying and disseminating the resulting rna, transforming the memory each time it's retrieved.
It would also explain urban legends about people's personalities changing to resemble their organ donors in some way - as a donor's memory packets that somehow ended up on the donor's organ and, with the help of immunosuppressants, managed to infect the receiver's brain.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00492-w
The side-to-side comparison is not very accurate. The brain consists of many structures, many of them involved in non-cognitive tasks.
The "speed of basic operation" column is given as "10 GHz" for a computer and 1 kHz for a human brain, but later is clarified that the 1 kHz refers to the maximum observed frequency of a neuron's output. Arguably these are unrelated metrics. I don't think a thing like "speed of basic operation" can even be defined for a human brain, because fundamentally it's a programmable computer metric that simply doesn't transfe…
IIRC the frequency of a neuron's output is used to encode the magnitude of the signal.
Take for example a neuron transmitting a pain signal, low frequency is used to transmit low levels of pain.
High frequency, extreme pain.
I feel like there must be some way to 'clean' our brains. As we get older it must accumulate 'gunk' that slow it down or weaken connections. I guess sleep is the closest thing we have but to me that's like saying drink water to fix tooth decay.
The analogy is flawed, but the brain already has some pretty intricate garbage control methods. As we learn more about them, it'll open up new paths for clinical treatments for a host of problems.
0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24136970
1. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-sle...
2. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/alzheimer-s-protein-m...
The brain definitely has an edge on compute power. The computer has an edge on storage power. I would bet the brain doesn’t store more than a Terabyte of information. We just need more cores without spiking energy usage.
The major problem is that we are not trained today to recall most of what gets laid down. We are far to dependent of external storage mechanisms, books, videos, etc, that we no longer train ourselves to actually recall and pass on our knowledge.
I am not saying that external memory is bad, just that we should be using all options available to us.
Our understanding of the brain and its mechanisms is very much in the very early stages - we have just scratched the surface.