{"id":21026,"date":"2016-01-21T02:46:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T10:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/memory-capacity-of-brain-is-10-times-more-than-previously-thought"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:04:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T18:04:51","slug":"memory-capacity-of-brain-is-10-times-more-than-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/memory-capacity-of-brain-is-10-times-more-than-previously-thought","title":{"rendered":"Memory capacity of brain is 10 times more than previously thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/maPN_4BF9x8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a computational reconstruction of brain tissue in the hippocampus, Salk and UT-Austin scientists found the unusual occurrence of two synapses from the axon of one neuron (translucent black strip) forming onto two spines on the same dendrite of a second neuron (yellow). Separate terminals from one neuron\u2019s axon are shown in synaptic contact with two spines (arrows) on the same dendrite of a second neuron in the hippocampus. The spine head volumes, synaptic contact areas (red), neck diameters (gray) and number of presynaptic vesicles (white spheres) of these two synapses are almost identical. (credit: Salk Institute) <\/p>\n<p>Salk researchers and collaborators have achieved critical insight into the size of neural connections, putting the memory capacity of the brain far higher than common estimates. The new work also answers a longstanding question as to how the brain is so energy efficient, and could help engineers build computers that are incredibly powerful but also conserve energy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a real bombshell in the field of neuroscience,\u201d says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salk.edu\/scientist\/terrence-sejnowski\/\" target=\"_blank\">Terry Sejnowski<\/a>, Salk professor and co-senior author of the paper, which was published in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.7554\/eLife.10778\" target=\"_blank\">eLife<\/a><\/em>. \u201cWe discovered the key to unlocking the design principle for how hippocampal neurons function with low energy but high computation power. Our new measurements of the brain\u2019s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte (1 quadrillion or 10<sup>15<\/sup> bytes), in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/memory-capacity-of-brain-is-10-times-more-than-previously-thought\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a computational reconstruction of brain tissue in the hippocampus, Salk and UT-Austin scientists found the unusual occurrence of two synapses from the axon of one neuron (translucent black strip) forming onto two spines on the same dendrite of a second neuron (yellow). Separate terminals from one neuron\u2019s axon are shown in synaptic contact with [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,1523,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-computing","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21026"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63175,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21026\/revisions\/63175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}