With the evolution of technology that promotes processing on a quantum scale, with incredible speeds, is our brain still the best machine the universe has made? Well, scientists have calculated the speed at which our brain thinks and… surprise, it’s slower than expected!
Brain processes in 10 bits...
Ours Brains are complex and powerful computerscapable of processing information at high speed. Or at least that's what we thought. Because a new study has just qualified this notion: the speed at which we think may not be as fast as they claim!
A new estimate of the speed at which our brain processes information has calculated this speed as equivalent to 10 bits per second. The study also revealed that the way it does this is in series and not in parallel, that is, our brain processes a flow of information, one piece of data at a time, and is not capable of working with several flows at the same time.
The value caught the attention of many due to its magnitude, which is smaller than one might expect. According to the explanation of the team responsible for the study, our brain has 85 billion neurons, each capable of transmitting information at speeds greater than this.
This becomes even more impressive when we consider the immense speed at which our nervous system gathers information about what is happening around us, a speed about 100 million times greater than that at which our brain processes this information.
This is an extremely low number. At any given moment, we are extracting just 10 bits from the billion that our senses capture and using those 10 to perceive the world around us and make decisions. This raises a paradox: what is the brain doing to filter all this information?
Highlighted Markus Meister, co-author of the study, in a press release.
Likewise, it is curious that we are only able to process information “in series”, even when our perception of the external world is based on the interaction between multiple senses operating and compiling information at the same time.
The study was carried out by Jieyu Zheng and Meitner and was based on the application of techniques from the field of theory of information to the field of neuroscience. The team analyzed scientific literature focused on tasks as diverse as reading, writing, playing video games or solving Rubik's cubes. From this, the new estimate was arrived at.
Details of the study were published in an article in the journal Neuron.
The evolutionary process
Why is the brain so “slow” and only able to process streams of information?
The team believes the answer lies in the way we evolve. They explain that the first animals to develop a nervous system used their brains for two simple tasks: searching for food and escaping predators.
Human thought can be seen as a way of navigating through a space of abstract concepts. Our ancestors chose an ecological niche where the world was slow enough to make survival possible. In fact, 10 bits per second is only needed in worst-case scenarios, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace.
Write the team.
Source: pplware.sapo.pt
