The answer to this question depends on what we mean by the word “computer.” Most computers today are all digital and perform one (or perhaps a few) computations at a time at extremely high speed. In contrast, the human brain combines digital and analog methods but performs most computations in the analog (continuous) domain, using neurotransmitters and related mechanisms. Although these neurons execute calculations at extremely slow speeds (typically two hundred transactions per second), the brain as a whole is massively parallel: most of its neurons work at the same time, resulting in up to
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