[ExI] neurons

[Giovanni Santostasi]

What you are thinking that neurons are at a particular potential when at
rest (about -70 mV). But they are not firing all the time at all. There are
times when they are silent.


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:42 PM, William Flynn Wallace
<foozler83 at gmail.com>wrote:

> In The Future on the Mind, by Michio Kaku, he says as follows (facing page
> 342):
>
> "Define complex in terms of the total amount of information that can be
> stored.  The closet rival to the brain might be the info contained w/in our
> DNA.  Three billion base pairs containing one of four aids, therefore total
> amount of info is four to the three billionth power.  The brain can store
> much more - one hundred billion neurons, *which can either fire or not
> fire*.  Hence there are two raised to the one-hundred-billionth power
> initial states of the brain.... the states change every few milliseconds.
> A simple thought may contain  one hundred generations of neural firings.
> Hence there are two raised by one hundred billion, all raised to the
> hundredth power possible thoughts contained in one hundred generations.
> Brains are ceaselessly computing.  Therefore the total number of thoughts
> possible within N generations is two to the one-hundred-billionth power,
> all raised to the Nth power.
>
> My question concerns the underlined clause:  there are three states to a
> neuron:  increasing its rate, decreasing its rate, and staying the same.
> Kaku says that a neuron fires or not.  This seems to say that a neuron is
> idle, waiting for stimuli, whereas I think that no neuron ever is not
> firing.
>
> Am I confused again, or is he wrong?  bill w
>
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