It is estimated that a map of all the synaptic connections within just a cubic millimeter of human brain tissue could fill a petabyte of storage.
Tracing the human brain’s connections.
A petabyte is roughly equivalent in informational terms to 13.3 years of HDTV content, or 58,292 movies. One petabyte could also approximately fill 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets full of text.
I really hate comparisons like these. It tries to simplify biological structures to simplistic binary data and that’s just not how it works. Like claiming the DNA in sperm carries so much data when DNA is not data. I’m not saying that these structures aren’t mechanistic in nature, just not as simple as binary data. It gives the general public the wrong impression of what biology really is.
Vern,
This suggests nothing about how the brain or the internal structures that allow it to function actually work, it is merely an estimation to show an incredible amount of information processing power.
Do you know how the map can be created or what format it is stored as?
Kyle-
I think the “map” would be a literal representation of the neuronal connections in a human brain. As far as the informational capacity, I assume this is an estimation.
They are also using comparisons just to make the numbers look bigger too. I mean? drawers of text?????
While it’s a lot of data, it’s only 250-400 times the size of a modern large consumer hard drive.
Fair enough, it is a bit of science cheer leading.