More Neural Connections than Atoms in the Universe?

Ive heard from several different sources that the human brain has, to quote from one of them, “. . .over 110 billion nerve cells capable of (10^2,733,000) interconnections, a number higher than the total of all the atoms in the universe.”

Put another way I remember seeing it, something like 100 billion nerve cells, each with the potential to connect to up to 100,000 other cells, but on average connects to about 10,000. I guess, doing the math, it seems to make sense that the number of connections is just HUGE - but more than the number of atoms in the entire universe? Are you kidding? Do we realise how big the universe is? How many atoms there are even in a single star, a single GALAXY? And how many millions of galaxies there are. . . ?

Can this possibly be true? Does anyone out there have any info on this, whether its accurate or not. . . it seems to completely defy logic.

There may be an information breakdown somehow in where you heard of this. It does seem inconceivable for as large as the universe is that the amount of possible pathways would exceed the number of atoms in the whole of the universe. But then again, 2.73 million ‘zeros’ after 10 is quite a few.

I know. . . I need someone to verify this mathematically, one way or the other.

Theres more POTENTIAL connections (synapses) and thats true.

madsci.org/posts/archives/ja … .Ns.r.html

If thats staggering imagine all the neurons developed in an entire life, the sum of all these possible connections would be MUCH MORE VAST if we considering neurons dying and being born. Instead of total neurons for one glimpse of time. Staggering.

It still makes no sense. We cannot even conceive of how large the universe is. Imagine how many individual atoms there are even in a single Star. There are billions of stars in even a single galaxy, and potentially billions of galaxies. Thats not even counting all the planets and other things. It just doesnt make sense to think that in such a small area of the human brain, relatively nonexistent in size compared to even the Sun let alone an entire UNIVERSE, can have more connections between neurons. Neurons are cell structures ultimately made of atoms, how can the number of connections between these (what are these connections composed of then, if not more atoms? Empty space in the case of synapses, but these nevertheless need to be mediated by neurotransmitters, which are MORE atoms!) So youre saying that there are more connections in the brain than atoms in the entire universe, yet each connection in the brain must be mediated by atoms. . . it doesnt make sense.

Even if we imagine dead and new connections which form all the time, this still cant work, because it assumes that even in this changing picture there are more atoms in the human brain over the course of a human lifetime than in the total universe. Still absurd.

Not perhaps if we conceive of subatomic connections between neurons, synapse links that do not rely on atoms to transmit information - but I dont think this is how neurotransmission works. Each neural connection is synaptic, and each synapse uses tramsmitters which are just simple chemical compounds, made of atoms.

Christ on a bike who would do that.

Sounds plausible assuming there are that many brain cells and possible connections. I would Imagine the actual number of connections is much smaller, since its unlikely that a single cell can physically connect to all the cells in the human brain you’d have to par that down to physically consistent paramaters, for example I’m pretty sure that cells generally connect only with cells in particular areas, and there are networks connecting them to other groups of cells. I’m not a neurologist though so don’t quote me on that.

There are only a mere 3x10^79 hydrogen atoms in the Universe, and that’s mostly what it is, assuming dark matter is non existent. So I’d say it may well be true but not by that much probably a few hundred orders of magnitude less.

It’s not a matter of size, it’s just how empty the universe is despite its size, just a tad above 0 density atoms per square m.

hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/Chr … heng.shtml

It does because the connections in the brain don’t actually exist physically in that magnitude, and the number is unrealistic, it assumes all connections possible in a computer model not in actual fact. It’s got lost in translation a tad like someone else said.

Ok, but a star is incredibly dense. There have got to be counless impossibly high numbers of atoms even in a single star. So multiply out how many stars there are in the universe. And add planets/etc in there too.

And also, every neural connection in the human brain needs atoms to mediate the connection (synapse) ! So are there more atoms in the human brain than there are atoms in the whole univers. . . .?

Hmm what to do, what to do. density is an average, it doesn’t matter though there are only about 3x10^79 atoms in the Universe, maybe a few less helium atoms, but double it and its still not as many as the theoretical number of connections that could happen in the human brain. Bearing in mind the number sounds like BS unless its just grinding the cogs and putting out a hypothetical number. Do you really think anyone could count the number of connections? I think perhaps you are getting confused into thinking these connections really exist instead of being potential connections. It’s also often said the storage capacity of the brain is only limited by time not space. If you see what I mean, there’s only so fast you can absorb info, but theoretically there’s no reason you couldn’t store all the knowledge in the Universe if you lived forever.

Assuming these connections are real and not potentials.

Ok, but this is not what these quotes are intending to say really, they are not saying that if you just put the number of neurons raised to the power of the number of neurons, this is greater than the total number of atoms in the universe. That isnt what they are claiming. They are claiming that it is true or potentially true that the human brain CAN or DOES have more connections than atoms in the universe. Its not just an abstract mathematical exercize of (100 billion)^(100 billionth power); its a statement about the real conditions in the brain. So youre right that in terms of abstract mathematics, the number of neurons raised to its own power is so astronomical that it exceeds the number of atoms in the universe, this mathematical formula is pointless since in reality it would be physically impossible for the brain to every approach this number of connections.

Logically, the claim that the brain CAN or DOES have more connections than atoms in the universe is obviously completely false, because there cannot be more atoms in the brain than there are atoms in the universe (i.e. each connection requires X amount of atoms to exist). Yet this is the claim made by these people who use this quote. In terms of completely abstract mathematical formulas that just take the total number of neurons n and go “n^n is greater than the total number of atoms in the universe!” Im sure it is, but once again this is both completely meaningless in reality, and it is NOT what people mean when they use this statement.

I can get on board with that. I don’t think they intended to deceive, although it’d be nice to see a link to this information to see exactly how they put it. Human memory is fickle and we lose lots of brain cell connections as we grow older and start talking about the war or whatever biddies talk about these days, hip replacements, bus queues, young people being 20% more evil than when they were kids and were thrashed to death by psychotic fathers.

I don’t think it would be worth reporting them to the international board of logicians as they probably just said in theory, and by theory they meant hypothesis, and by hypothesis they meant it didn’t actually happen, and by that they meant it was bullshit and they just said it to kill some time between 9 to 5. So no legal issue.

POTENTIAL connections aren’t REAL connections. Real synapses require atoms, its a thought experiment about POTENTIAL connections, which there ARE more of. Read the link I posted.

Were they real connections they would be made of atoms.

You’re right I should of said who would do that without a question mark, Which it turns out I did for some reason? On reading that: someone would and did. Good stuff, thanks. My maths is not good enough to explore exponential situations in any detail, yet.

What a cool way to put thing in perspective… Do you suppose anyone could prove what you say???You do know we are getting less atoms as we think… It takes many hydrogen to make one Iron…

defies Reason as well

Last man
I’ve heard this too and puzzled about it. I think what they mean is not the number of physical connections but the number of pathways or trips a signal could take through the network.

Like if you have two points connected you can make one trip, assuming that the direction is unimportant. If you have three you can make two trips. One starts at 1 and ends at 2 , another starts at 1 and ends at 3, and one more from 2 to 3.

In this simple model the trips or paths start piling up fast. In this simple case they don’t come close to the 10^80 atoms in the universe. But some other connectedness might account for it.

But I don’t remember what I ‘heard’ so I gust guess that was what was meant.

Simply work out the integral of e^x^2

And you’ll have the answer does not compute or infinity.

There could potentially be infinite connection given dx/dt.

Or the parametric of time in the universe. Assuming time is infinite.

AS you can see the definition of that integral is the error function.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_function

Thus the potential for imaginary concerns or potentials can be computed with

Which does not have an exact value and is infinite. Thus there could be more connections than atoms in t=infinite on the imaginary axis. Which is a proof of the error function applied to a real system and so is pretty much correct.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … nction.svg

Doesn’t the phrase “capable of” in the quote imply possible, rather than actual? I don’t see anything in the quote that implies that the connections have to be made at the same time. It doesn’t say “capable of xxxx simultaneous connections”, right?

Which, when you think of it, means the quote really isn’t as impressive as it sounds.

After all, say you have a piano and you are allowed to create a song with 88 played notes in sequence. Wouldn’t all the possible songs you can play with just those 88 notes be a pretty damn big number too? (Someone remind me - is that 88 factorial?)…

Infinity is a big number it also cannot exist.

Since neural connections are composed of atoms which are apart of the universe, this proposition is absurd.

it seems quite strange and surreal, and yet possible! :-p

according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron under the section CONNECTIVITY it reads: the human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 10^11 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons.

10 to the power of 11 = 100000000000

100000000000 times 7000 = 700000000000000

700000000000000 is the number of synaptic connections, however that number does not reveal all the possible connection between neurons. if we want to find all the possible connection we must take the FACTORIAL which uses the symbol “!” in statistics. e.g. if we want to take the factorial of, say, 5 we’d do it like this 5! = 5 times 4 times 3 times 2 times 1 = 120 so if we would have 5 synaptic connections then we would have 120 possible connections.

the only problem is that, to take the factorial of 700000000000000 may be impossible, cos the number is too large. well at least my calculator isn’t powerful enough for that

moreover, according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe there are 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the observable universe. well 10^80 is much less than 700000000000000 factorial? i suppose so… of course thou this is just the observable universe, who knows how many atoms there are in the entire universe.

finally, giving that, all the numbers and estimates are correct, and that i didn’t mess up any calculations as i usually do, it seems fair to say that there are more possible connections in the brain than atoms in the observable universe. this, of course, doesn’t prove that there are in fact more possible connections in the brain than in the entire universe, however the question still remains plausible, since the brain beats the observable universe.

P.S. we must consider one thing when we discuss about the brain, which is, the brain MUST have A LOT neurones, synapses, connections etc, cos the brain is what gives rise to consciousness (if that even exists) so there must be an “infinite” amount of possible connection, so that we may act freely and not predetermined…

or maybe im just drunk