Our brains are complex and powerful computers capable of processing information at high speed. Or at least that’s what we believed. Because a new study has just qualified this notion: the speed at which we think may not be as fast as we previously believed.
10 bits per second. A new estimate From the speed at which our brain processes information, its speed has been calculated to be the equivalent of 10 bits per second. The study has also revealed that the way it does it is in series and not in parallel, that is, our brain processes one thread of information, one piece of information after another and is not capable of working with several threads at the same time. time.
A mysterious contrast. The figure has attracted attention of many due to its magnitude, smaller than one would expect. According to the team responsible for the study, our brain has 85 billion neurons, each capable of transmitting information at speeds higher than this.
This is even more striking if we take into account the immense speed at which our nervous system compiles information about what is happening around us, a speed about 100 million times faster than the speed at which our brain processes it.
“This is an extremely low number,” indicated in a press release Markus Meister, co-author of the study. “Each moment, we are extracting only 10 bits of the trillion that our senses capture and using those 10 to perceive the world around us and make decisions. This leads to a paradox: What is the brain doing to filter all that information?”
In series or in parallel. Likewise, it is striking that we are only capable of processing information “serially”, also when our perception of the outside is based on the interaction between multiple senses operating and compiling information at the same time.
Information theory. The study was carried out by Jieyu Zheng and Meitner and was based on the application of techniques from the field of information theory to the field of neuroscience. The team analyzed scientific literature focused on disparate tasks such as reading, writing, video games or solving Rubik’s cubes. From this they obtained the new estimate.
Details of the study were published in an article in the magazine Neuron.
Evolutionary question. Why a brain so “slow” and capable of only processing threads of information? The team believes the answer lies in the way we evolve. The first animals to have a nervous system, they explain, used their brains for two simple tasks: searching for food and fleeing from predators.
“Human thinking can be seen as a form of navigation through a space of abstract concepts,” the team writes. “Our ancestors have chosen an ecological niche where the world is slow enough to make survival possible. In fact, 10 bits per second are only necessary in the worst scenarios and most of the time our environment changes at a much calmer pace.”
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Image | David Matos / GerryShaw
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