[ExI] neurons

[William Flynn Wallace]

Well, OK, but the slowest they get is about one spike per second (up to 30)
without external stimulation.  Not exactly resting.  bill w


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Giovanni Santostasi
<gsantostasi at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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