In comparison, what can we say about the efficiency of the human brain? Earlier in this chapter we discussed how each of the approximately 1014 interneuronal connections can store an estimated 104 bits in the connection’s neurotransmitter concentrations and synaptic and dendritic nonlinearities (specific shapes), for a total of 1018 bits. The human brain weighs about the same as our stone (actually closer to 3 pounds than 2.2, but since we’re dealing with orders of magnitude, the measurements are close enough). It runs warmer than a cold stone, but we can still use the same estimate of about
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