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How Many Tasks Can Our Brains Process At The Same Time?
The human brain has been described as a massively parallel computing machine. But just how powerful is it? A recent brain scan analysis is offering some unexpected results.
Neuroscientist Harris Georgiou from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece recently took it upon himself to count the number of discrete "CPU cores" at work in the human brain as it performs simple tasks in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.
This is quite the task when you think about it. The human brain consists of about 100 billion neurons that each make up about 10,000 connections with their counterparts. By using an fRMI machine, and by quantizing the brain into 3D pixels called voxels (each about five cubic millimeters in size), Georgiou was able to map the complete activity of the brain using a grid of 60 x 60 x 30 voxels. Through this method, he produced a dataset of around 30 million data points.
(Georgiou)
Brain activity was recorded as participants performed one of two simple tasks, one a visuo-motor task, the other a visual recognition task. MIT's Technology Review describes the findings:
Although the analysis is complex, the outcome is simple to state. Georgiou says that independent component analysis reveals that about 50 independent processes are at work in human brains performing the complex visuo-motor tasks of indicating the presence of green and red boxes. However, the brain uses fewer processes when carrying out simple tasks, like visual recognition.
That's a fascinating result that has important implications for the way computer scientists should design chips intended to mimic human performance. It implies that parallelism in the brain does not occur on the level of individual neurons but on a much higher structural and functional level, and that there are about 50 of these.
Georgiou points out that a typical voxel corresponds to roughly three million neurons, each with several thousand connections with its neighbors. However, the current state-of-the-art neuromorphic chips contain a million artificial neurons each with only 256 connections. What is clear from this work is that the parallelism that Georgiou has measured occurs on a much larger scale than this. [emphasis added]
So an artificial equivalent of a brain-like cognitive structure may not require a massively parallel architecture at the level of single neurons. Instead, and as noted by Georgiou, one could be built using "a properly designed set of limited processes that run in parallel on a much lower scale."
Read the entire article at MIT's Technology Review, and check out the scientific study here.
Source: http://io9.com/how-many-tasks-can-our-brain-process-at-the-same-time-1656810251
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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