Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite to Data Input?
To what capacity is the brain useful, how much can it store, is there a limit?
Technology reveals to what extent our thinking takes us, to building construction, computers, designing, knowledge, to writing a masterpiece. What other undiscovered truths face us that will become knowledge, are questions continuously on the minds of scientists seeking them.
It is known humanity only uses a percentage of the human brain's capacity for knowledge. And that is in the span of a lifetime. It would be interesting to observe or measure with technology if possible, how much of a brain's capacity is being used up by an extremely educated subject, one who educates himself on a daily basis.
Is there a limit to the data input going into the brain, does the brain become confused, or is the brain unlimited?
Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
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Dan Rowden
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Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
It's perfectly obvious the brain is limited.
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mensa-maniac
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
"It's perfectly obvious the brain is limited"
How is it obvious?
What's the difference between an educated brain vs. an uneducated brain in regards to limitation? The uneducated brain is ignorant but not necessarily less knowledgeable, or more limited than that of an educated brain.
How is a human brain limited? Does limitation imply inability to learn?
Is it limited through the power of suggestion?
How is it obvious?
What's the difference between an educated brain vs. an uneducated brain in regards to limitation? The uneducated brain is ignorant but not necessarily less knowledgeable, or more limited than that of an educated brain.
How is a human brain limited? Does limitation imply inability to learn?
Is it limited through the power of suggestion?
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
It is limited in that it is not everything in Existence. It is limited to what it is.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
To answer this question - as regards neuroscience - the brain is limited to a long-term storage capacity of about 5 sets of encyclopedias and short-term memory of about 7 items.
Further limitations involve the ability of the brain to represent structure. Particularly the structure of itself, it basically does this in the ways we commonly refer to as "our" mental lives. That is rather than being aware of the computational structure of motivational brain processes we are simply aware of "our ambition". There are many reasons for this, the least of which is the fact that it would be impossible to know everything without exceeding the limits of chemical energy available to the organism. Evolution, of course, wasn't concerned with our knowledge, it was "concerned" with survivability. Low-energy intake accounts for greater survivability, but so does but representational abilities, so evolution struck a balance between energy consumption and representational structure. A lot of phenomena, particularly sub-personal mental phenomena are completely unavailable for cognition, introspection or awareness. There are however, a few ghosts floating around that can be singled out and brought into clarity.
Further limitations involve the ability of the brain to represent structure. Particularly the structure of itself, it basically does this in the ways we commonly refer to as "our" mental lives. That is rather than being aware of the computational structure of motivational brain processes we are simply aware of "our ambition". There are many reasons for this, the least of which is the fact that it would be impossible to know everything without exceeding the limits of chemical energy available to the organism. Evolution, of course, wasn't concerned with our knowledge, it was "concerned" with survivability. Low-energy intake accounts for greater survivability, but so does but representational abilities, so evolution struck a balance between energy consumption and representational structure. A lot of phenomena, particularly sub-personal mental phenomena are completely unavailable for cognition, introspection or awareness. There are however, a few ghosts floating around that can be singled out and brought into clarity.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Potentially infinite. it's a prism that can reflect light of the highest frequency.mensa-maniac wrote:Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite to Data Input?
Humans as a rule use about 10% of the brain, this is why fallacies like the theory of evolution are accepted, it's based on an incomplete and ridiculous idea, but it's acceptable to a 10 percent brain, which is what almost all people are operating at.mensa-maniac wrote:It is known humanity only uses a percentage of the human brain's capacity for knowledge.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Neuroscience For Kids: Do We Use Only 10% of Our Brains?prince wrote:Humans as a rule use about 10% of the brain, this is why fallacies like the theory of evolution are accepted, it's based on an incomplete and ridiculous idea, but it's acceptable to a 10 percent brain, which is what almost all people are operating at.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
What stupidity in that link, Robert. Imagine a scientist, as an argument, telling a kid that using ten percent of one's potential is equivalent to surgically removing 90% of the gray matter.Robert wrote:Neuroscience For Kids: Do We Use Only 10% of Our Brains?prince wrote:Humans as a rule use about 10% of the brain, this is why fallacies like the theory of evolution are accepted, it's based on an incomplete and ridiculous idea, but it's acceptable to a 10 percent brain, which is what almost all people are operating at.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Carl, why would I imagine such a thing? Nowhere in that linked article does any scientist make such an argument.Carl G wrote:What stupidity in that link, Robert. Imagine a scientist, as an argument, telling a kid that using ten percent of one's potential is equivalent to surgically removing 90% of the gray matter.Robert wrote:Neuroscience For Kids: Do We Use Only 10% of Our Brains?prince wrote:Humans as a rule use about 10% of the brain, this is why fallacies like the theory of evolution are accepted, it's based on an incomplete and ridiculous idea, but it's acceptable to a 10 percent brain, which is what almost all people are operating at.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
What data were used to come up with the number - 10%? Does this mean that you would be just fine if 90% of your brain was removed? If the average human brain weighs 1,400 grams (about 3 lb) and 90% of it was removed, that would leave 140 grams (about 0.3 lb) of brain tissue. That's about the size of a sheep's brain. It is well known that damage to a relatively small area of the brain, such as that caused by a stroke, may cause devastating disabilities. Certain neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's Disease, also affect only specific areas of the brain. The damage caused by these conditions is far less than damage to 90% of the brain.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Meaning that the damage caused by removing 90% of the brain would be much worse than the devastating disabilities that certain neurological disorders already provoke in "relatively small areas of the brain, such as those caused by a stroke".
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Why then was it written under this heading:
What Does it Mean to Use Only 10% of Your Brain?
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Pincho Paxton
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Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
The brain is limited to its size. Genius have better selective memory however, so can reuse some of it, but this can be dangerous. Stephen Hawkins probably has super-selective memory, but it probably over-wrote his body functions. That's how dangerous it can be.
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Ryan Rudolph
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Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
The brain is very limited, and the 10% of your brain theory is incorrect. The type of processing needed dictates what part of your brain activates, but most parts of the brain activate at some point or another.
Here is an example of how limited the brain is:
Try talking on your cell phone, while being attentive to your driving during rush hour. You will have a difficult time. Why? because the brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time well, and if it attempts to multitask, there is a bottleneck effect, it cannot process sensory information from two different sources simultaneously, and maintain the same level of attention.
In my province, they just passed a law that prohibits drivers from talking on their cell phones unless they have a bluetooth or headset, but they got it all wrong. Its not a motor control processing issue, its an attention issue. Cell phones should be banned while driving period.
The brain is like a computer, it takes in electrical stimulus from the environment and creates a mental picture, but its capacity is dependent on the material structure of the brain. And the material structure has only evolved a limited number of neural pathways to perform tasks, that is why brain damage can effect ones quality of consciousness.
Here is an example of how limited the brain is:
Try talking on your cell phone, while being attentive to your driving during rush hour. You will have a difficult time. Why? because the brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time well, and if it attempts to multitask, there is a bottleneck effect, it cannot process sensory information from two different sources simultaneously, and maintain the same level of attention.
In my province, they just passed a law that prohibits drivers from talking on their cell phones unless they have a bluetooth or headset, but they got it all wrong. Its not a motor control processing issue, its an attention issue. Cell phones should be banned while driving period.
The brain is like a computer, it takes in electrical stimulus from the environment and creates a mental picture, but its capacity is dependent on the material structure of the brain. And the material structure has only evolved a limited number of neural pathways to perform tasks, that is why brain damage can effect ones quality of consciousness.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Because the common claim is that "we only use 10% of our brain". The paragraph basically says you'd be more fucked with 90% removed than the fucked you'd probably already be if you just had a stroke with 100% of your brain.Carl G wrote:Why then was it written under this heading:
What Does it Mean to Use Only 10% of Your Brain?
This has nothing to do with your suggestion - "Imagine a scientist, as an argument, telling a kid that using ten percent of one's potential is equivalent to surgically removing 90% of the gray matter".
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
So why is that even there in an article arguing against the old myth about average brain use? And why is that something to tell a kid?The paragraph basically says you'd be more fucked with 90% removed than the fucked you'd probably already be if you just had a stroke with 100% of your brain.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Send your queries on editorial content to chudler@u.washington.eduCarl G wrote:So why is that even there in an article arguing against the old myth about average brain use? And why is that something to tell a kid?The paragraph basically says you'd be more fucked with 90% removed than the fucked you'd probably already be if you just had a stroke with 100% of your brain.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Okay. Post your "Neuroscience for Kids" link here.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Carl, post links of your holiday snapshots in Worldy Matters.Carl G wrote:Okay. Post your "Neuroscience for Kids" link here.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
The 10% Myth originates....
because scientists originally couldn't determine the function of glia cells in the human brain. It was believed that glia cells did nothing (obviously an erroneous conclusion) and glia cells outnumber nerve cells 10:1.
We now know that glia cells mylenate nerve cells and also perform some chemical signaling themselves.
Another possible source of this myth is the overproduction of nerve cells and synapses prenatally. When a child is born it has approximately 4x the number of nerve cells and synapses that it will have as an adult. This is not, however, a loss of brain function, but a refining of brain function.
The truth is; you use all of your brain, if there was part of your brain you didn't use it would be starved of Neural Growth Factor and would die out. NGF is brain-food that nerve cells need to survive in the brain. There is a limited supply of NGF and other neurochemicals, so it is impossible for the brain to exceed a certain threshold. This is the basis for the "pruning" process which follows synaptogenesis and neurogenesis prenatally. Its a kind of "Survival of the fittest" that occurs in the brain. You can think of the brain as an evolutionary landscape at birth, where cells fight for survival and few actually survive. The end result is a more refined system of neural pathways, the landscape of neural networks becomes attuned to interpreting its stimuli (at least in a naive manner).
This is actually good, as I intimate with the phrase "more refined landscape". Children are somewhat aimless in attempting their goals and incapable of understanding themselves because of a chaotic neural landscape, the pruning back is necessary for proper demarcation of phenomena. They might be more enlightened in this sense, but they wouldn't know it and lack the self-determination of supposedly enlightened adults.
In short, the fact is, we use 100% of our brain, but not all at once, and whatever brain stuff we lost during the "pruning" process was all for the purpose of refining our ability to discriminate phenomena.
because scientists originally couldn't determine the function of glia cells in the human brain. It was believed that glia cells did nothing (obviously an erroneous conclusion) and glia cells outnumber nerve cells 10:1.
We now know that glia cells mylenate nerve cells and also perform some chemical signaling themselves.
Another possible source of this myth is the overproduction of nerve cells and synapses prenatally. When a child is born it has approximately 4x the number of nerve cells and synapses that it will have as an adult. This is not, however, a loss of brain function, but a refining of brain function.
The truth is; you use all of your brain, if there was part of your brain you didn't use it would be starved of Neural Growth Factor and would die out. NGF is brain-food that nerve cells need to survive in the brain. There is a limited supply of NGF and other neurochemicals, so it is impossible for the brain to exceed a certain threshold. This is the basis for the "pruning" process which follows synaptogenesis and neurogenesis prenatally. Its a kind of "Survival of the fittest" that occurs in the brain. You can think of the brain as an evolutionary landscape at birth, where cells fight for survival and few actually survive. The end result is a more refined system of neural pathways, the landscape of neural networks becomes attuned to interpreting its stimuli (at least in a naive manner).
This is actually good, as I intimate with the phrase "more refined landscape". Children are somewhat aimless in attempting their goals and incapable of understanding themselves because of a chaotic neural landscape, the pruning back is necessary for proper demarcation of phenomena. They might be more enlightened in this sense, but they wouldn't know it and lack the self-determination of supposedly enlightened adults.
In short, the fact is, we use 100% of our brain, but not all at once, and whatever brain stuff we lost during the "pruning" process was all for the purpose of refining our ability to discriminate phenomena.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
The 10% myth arose because people are asleep most of the time, hence function normally as imbeciles. It's actually more like 3% of the brain. They are functional morons compared to human potential as partially demonstrated by the few who manage to awaken, and even by the moments of consciousness attained by rank and file under certain types of pressure.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
That is erroneous, because it refers to a 90% which does not actually exist yet in their brain and I doubt enlightenment is the equivalent of an additional 9x the original brain's mass.Carl G wrote:The 10% myth arose because people are asleep most of the time, hence function normally as imbeciles. It's actually more like 3% of the brain. They are functional morons compared to human potential as partially demonstrated by the few who manage to awaken, and even by the moments of consciousness attained by rank and file under certain types of pressure.
Even if we go with the state of the brain post-natally, it is still only 4x or 5x the adult brain's mass.
Neurogenesis and synaptogenesis continue to occur throughout life, but these terms are misleading. Synaptogenesis is generally reserved for speaking about certain periods of brain growth, spurts of brain-growth like those prenatally and preadolescence. However, neurons and synapses are still developed through slower processes throughout life. When two cells fire in contiguously they undergo a metabolic change, a process called Long-Term Potentiation. The activation of synapses induces an influx of Brain-derived Neural Growth Factor (BDNF), NGF, and Neutrophins like NT-3, which strengthen the nerve-cell and its active synapses.
So parts of the brain grow and other parts die throughout our entire lives, especially as we learn and refine our concepts. Its not that we only use 10% of our brains, we use 100% of our brains, but some of us have more organized/coherent brains than others.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
To better understand this you should know how neural networks work to generated a representational hierarchy of stimuli.
Here is a start: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Cat ... l_networks
The "cells firing together contiguously" I spoke of is commonly given as "Hebb's Law" named after the Canadian Neurologist Donald Olding Hebb who coined the concept. It is usually summed up as "Cells that fire together wire together, cells that fire apart wire apart." So cells which fire discontinguously also undergo a reverse metabolic change called Long-Term Depression.
Of course, this basic idea can be traced back as far as the Atomist Democritus who said "By convention hot, by convention cold."
And Freud also made statements analogous to Hebb's Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory
There are some really good books which explain these processes, and particularly within the context of consciousness:
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul by Francis Crick
The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christoph Koch
Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy by Patricia Churchland
The Engine of Reason the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain by Paul Churchland
If you want to dive right into the thick of neuroscience the first two books are ideal, but if you want a slow philosophical introduction the latter two are better.
Here is a start: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Cat ... l_networks
The "cells firing together contiguously" I spoke of is commonly given as "Hebb's Law" named after the Canadian Neurologist Donald Olding Hebb who coined the concept. It is usually summed up as "Cells that fire together wire together, cells that fire apart wire apart." So cells which fire discontinguously also undergo a reverse metabolic change called Long-Term Depression.
Of course, this basic idea can be traced back as far as the Atomist Democritus who said "By convention hot, by convention cold."
And Freud also made statements analogous to Hebb's Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory
There are some really good books which explain these processes, and particularly within the context of consciousness:
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul by Francis Crick
The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christoph Koch
Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy by Patricia Churchland
The Engine of Reason the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain by Paul Churchland
If you want to dive right into the thick of neuroscience the first two books are ideal, but if you want a slow philosophical introduction the latter two are better.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Sorry, it is your synapse hocus pocus that is erroneous. It's not about brain function. It is about consciousness.
And awakening and enlightenment (as it is defined at Genius) are two different things. Awakening has to do with consciousness and Genius is related to knowledge.
And awakening and enlightenment (as it is defined at Genius) are two different things. Awakening has to do with consciousness and Genius is related to knowledge.
Re: Is the Human Brain limited or Infinite?
Don't start this bullshit with me Mr. G.Carl G wrote:Sorry, it is your synapse hocus pocus that is erroneous. It's not about brain function. It is about consciousness.
And awakening and enlightenment (as it is defined at Genius) are two different things. Awakening has to do with consciousness and Genius is related to knowledge.
What is consciousness but a set of discriminated representations? What the brain does is discriminate representations.
I'm not talking about something very different at all.
The problem seems to be that you have an emotional attachment your viewpoint that we only use 10% of our brains, or that there is something "more" about you than the average person. I'm saying as regards brains - which is what this discussion is bout/only using 10% of them - you are factually incorrect. The observable evidence suggests clarity is based on refinement of neural networks, not an overabundance of them. An overabundance of cells and synapses only leads to chaotic, aimless and disconcerted perceptions.
I know the difference between knowledge and "enlightenment" and quite apparently you possess neither. You clearly lack knowledge of brains but remark on them anyway and when an individual with actual knowledge challenges your viewpoint you react with hostility indicating a sense of selfhood and entitlement incompatible with enlightenment.
Now perform some lyrical magic to maintain your superior self-image.