A new study from Caltech reveals that the human brain processes information at a remarkably slow rate of only 10 bits per second, raising questions about how our brains filter vast amounts of sensory data.
Researchers at Caltech have calculated how fast the human brain processes information — and the number turned out to be hilariously low. We process many orders of magnitude more bits per second of other information about our environment. 'Every moment, we are extracting just 10 bits from the trillion that our senses are taking in and using those ten to perceive the world around us and make decisions,' Meister explained.
'This raises a paradox: What is the brain doing to filter all of this information?'But since our brain is limited to just one thought at a time, the researchers' findings leave plenty of major questions unanswered. For one, what exactly is happening with all of those other neurons? Why are our thoughts so constrained compared to our sensory system? In their paper, titled 'The unbearable slowness of being,' the team suggested that evolution may be to blame. Brains used to be used by primitive beings primarily for navigation or to get away from predators. Over the eons, human brains evolved to follow a single 'path' of thought at a time. 'Human thinking can be seen as a form of navigation through a space of abstract concepts,' the paper reads. 'Our ancestors have chosen an ecological niche where the world is slow enough to make survival possible.' 'In fact, the 10 bits per second are needed only in worst-case situations, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace,' the researchers wrote. The findings could have significant implications for our efforts to develop brain-computer interfaces, which may well also be restricted to this extreme speed limit. 'Based on the research reviewed here regarding the rate of human cognition, we predict that Musk’s brain will communicate with the computer at about 10 bits/s,' the team wrote
Human Brain Information Processing Evolution Brain-Computer Interface Sensory Data
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