• Question: How many terebytes can a brain hold

    Asked by terimater to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Judith McCann

      Judith McCann answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Around two is probably about right, but the capacity for memory isn’t easy to measure. This is because you brain holds on to things or discards them and you don’t really have a choice (unless you revise and cram it in!) like i can’t seem to remember the ideal gas law (uni stuff) off the top of my head but I can recite all the words to the theme tune of fresh prince of bel-air!!

      Although it seems really normal to compare your brain to a computer, you brain is actually way more amazing that your computer, you have the ability to reason things out and apply knowledge from different areas to one problem!!

    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I don’t know if it is that simple to calculate. I’d be interested in knowing how Judith quotes two as the answer.

      What I do know is that the brain has a very different mechanism of storing information than what computers have. We can draw certainly parallels, for example, in between Random Access Memory (RAM) in computers and our human being’s active memory (which has information that you may need in an instant) and that the connections in between neurons work by the electrical signal travelling around the neurons just like electrical signal travels through a circuit but that’s about it.

      Storing and accessing of memories is a very active area of research. When we do understand it, we would be able to remarkable things (like watch our life all over again!)…

    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Brilliant question. Hadn’t ever considered that before.

      I think it’s probably impossible to measure brain capacity in terms of terabytes. Not only would it vary massively from person to person, but it would also vary in the same person from day to day and over the course of their lives. Plus a brain stores information in a much more complex and efficient way than a computer, so they’re difficult to compare.

      Apparently the rough estimate of brain capacity being 2-3 terabytes is based on taking a cross section of a brain, counting the number of neurons in the cross section and assuming each neuron can hold one bit. Then multiplying the number of neurons in one cross section by the number of cross sections that would make up an average-sized brain and multiplying by eight to get the answer in bytes.

      Even the scientist who came up with this method admits it’s pretty rough though!

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