Biological Data Intake - Measured!
ben | 26 July, 2006 20:21Over at boingboing.net I just read a very interesting post about how scientists have been able to measure the actual number of bits of information that a guinea pig eye can transmit to the brain, and based on their findings they estimate that a human retina can transmit about 10 million bits of data per second. The question is, of course, where does all that freakin' data go?!? Here's a clip from the original article cited by boingboing.net:
The researchers found that the electrical spike patterns differed between cell types. For example, the larger, brisk cells fired many spikes per second and their response was highly reproducible. In contrast, the smaller, sluggish cells fired fewer spikes per second and their responses were less reproducible.
But, what's the relationship between these spikes and information being sent? "It's the combinations and patterns of spikes that are sending the information. The patterns have various meanings," says co-author Vijay Balasubramanian, PhD, Professor of Physics at Penn. "We quantify the patterns and work out how much information they convey, measured in bits per second."
Calculating the proportions of each cell type in the retina, the team estimated that about 100,000 guinea pig ganglion cells transmit about 875,000 bits of information per second. Because sluggish cells are more numerous, they account for most of the information. With about 1,000,000 ganglion cells, the human retina would transmit data at roughly the rate of an Ethernet connection, or 10 million bits per second.
I know this stat has been stated elsewhere before, but I've never come across any specific scientific measurement of the eye itself and it's transmission of data.
The original article is here.
The boingboing.net post is here.
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