Forget everything that was known about human memory: a new study showed that the memory capacity of our brain is 10 times larger than previously thought. “This is a real bomb in the field of neurology,” says Salka Terry Sejnovski, a scientist at the Institute of Biological Research. “Our new measurements of the memory capacity of the brain have increased the conservative estimates 10 times to a petabyte minimum, the entire Internet is assessed in this volume.” This is 1000 terabytes, if that.
Scientists studied rat hippocampal tissue and reconstructed it in 3D to study the brain's memory center. After that, they had the opportunity to observe a strange phenomenon for the first time. Apparently, brain synapses can change sizes, which affects the amount of memory.
At first they found that in 10% of cases the synapses were duplicated. In an effort to find out why this happened, scientists used advanced microscopy and computational algorithms to reconstruct the compounds, shapes, volumes, and surface area of brain tissue.
As a result, it turned out that the difference in the sizes of pairs of synapses was very small, about 8%. “Nobody expected that there would be such a small difference. This is a jokes from nature, ”says scientist Tom Bartol. Scientists have concluded that there are at least 26 categories of synapses, and not a few, as previously thought. This added complexity of connections between neurons translates into a significant increase in the possible memory capacity of the brain.
“This is an order of magnitude greater than everything we imagined in terms of accuracy,” says Sejnovski. - The consequences of the detected will be very far-reaching. Under the seeming chaos and disorder of the brain, the incredible accuracy of the size and shape of synapses is hidden, which was hidden from us. ”
Further studies have shown that synapses can change their size depending on neural transmissions, and this happens almost instantly.
No matter how interesting this discovery is, it does not help you remember where you left your car keys. But scientists can use this study specifically for further work in the field of computers, creating advanced methods of deep learning and neural networks.
An adult's brain produces about 20 watts of constant power, roughly like a dim bulb, but is capable of things that any modern computer can only dream of.
The article is based on materials .
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