How many GB’s are you?

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Original date of posting: July 6, 2009.


This came up in a conversation yesterday…Is it possible to measure the capacity of the human brain? To be precise, can we know how many KB, MB, GB, or TB (terabytes) of memory we can store in our brain? The human brain can be compared to a computer, I feel. We have the working memory, i.e., the random access memory (RAM), that has the information to control the basic body functions, i.e., breathing, digestion, blood circulation, hormone production, cell multiplication, etc, so our conscious brain does not have to work overtime to remember to breathe every time. Maybe our DNA is also a part of the RAM since it contains our genetic information, and the conscious brain is the hard disk, where we store the information we acquire, from our first ABCs and spellings to grocery lists, thesis reports, and current affairs.

Is there a limit to how much information we can store? Is it the case that when we exceed the limited quota, we tend to lose some information that the brain assumes is no longer required? Does our capacity increase with age, or does it remain constant? I have heard these statements before that an average trained dog understands 160 words. How much does this translate in terms of data capacity? How many bytes are 160 words? Probably different animals have different amounts of data storage capacities…right from a few bytes for an Amoeba to a few hundred MBs for an elephant….What about humans? The ‘spelling bee’ kids seem to defy the vocabulary of most adults, but how many bytes in data space are required to remember all the words in the dictionary?

The brain capacity number can probably help us to ascertain the syllabus for schools and colleges, so that we don’t mug up random stuff, and forget the critical information. It might also be interesting to know when the brain of an adult reaches its capacity on average, after which the purging starts… Also, do humans come in different brain capacities?

Maybe some day we will introduce ourselves as “Hi, I am a 750 GB” or “Hello I am a TB, and this is my son… I don’t know for sure but we think he will grow up to be a 500 TB”……..

Imagine that!

Comments

Sachin Shanbhag said…
Two comments:

(i) the human DNA is 6 billion base pairs (wikipedia), which as a rough approximation is about 1GB in each DNA. Each cell has atleast one copy, and hence 1GB and 10^14, which is 10^8 petabytes. Ofcourse lot of the information merely duplicated.
(ii) how much can our mind store is a harder question, since a pictures, movies, and sounds are probably stored more efficiently than the way in which a computer would store them.
July 6, 2009 at 6:56 PM
Ash said…
That's an interesting fact!
July 7, 2009 at 9:31 AM
Anonymous said…
Even if we we forget about something, we can recall it if we come across something associated with it. Does it ever happen to you that you are doing something and suddenly you recall something completely different from the distant past. It's the chemistry of the brain. Or pure miracle...
Also, how amazing is Deja Vu or Rebirth and memories associated with that?

A
July 9, 2009 at 9:59 AM
Ash said…
Ya, I guess just a trigger in the form of a picture, a smell or a sound is enough to bring back old memories. But with regards to past life memories, where this knowledge comes from is a mystery.
At least the brain has a physical entity in the form of neural connections to store the data, but the soul is hypothesized to be pure energy...so where does it store the data?
DNA is not shared in the case of rebirths...they occur randomly...so how does the memory remain and in what form?
I guess our science has a long way to go before it finds out the answers to all these questions.
July 10, 2009 at 9:21 AM
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