The human brain, marvel of design

The human brain, marvel of design

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1377-the-human-brain-marvel-of-design

The human central nervous system (CNS) is the most complex living organ in the known universe. 1

Your brain is like 100 billion mini-computers all working together
Each of our brain cells could work like a mini-computer, according to the first recording of electrical activity in human cells at a super-fine level of detail.

The brain tissue is composed out of approximately 200 billion neurons and neuroglial cells that are connected by more than 15 trillion electrical and chemical synapses into the networks with extraordinary computing and memory storage capacity—the latter being estimated to reach a petabite mark. High density of electrically excited cells, which rely on constant movement of ions across their membranes, the process requiring ATP in quantity (a single human cortical neuron is claimed to use approximately 4.7 billion ATP molecules per second ), makes the brain the major energy consumer in the organism. The human brain is highly resilient to the passing years and the brain appears as one of the most age-resilient systems of the human body. Indeed, the 40-year-old athlete cannot compete in the sprint with youngsters, whereas a 60-year-old academic has, as a rule, much higher intellectual output than many of his 20-year-old students. This reflects a remarkable plasticity of the human brain, which is optimized for learning thus recompensing the age-dependent alterations. 12

The bit capacity of the human brain (86 billion neurons) at 10^8,342 bits (Wang, Liu & Wang, 2003) exceeds the bit capacity of the entire universe at 10^120 bits upon which a maximum of 10^90 bits could have been operated on in the last 14 billion years (Lloyd, 2002). [YES...I meant to write 10 raised to the 8,342 power] In order to put such numbers into perspective, realize that the number of elementary particles (protons, neutron, electrons) in the physical universe is only 10^80. I have serious doubts—based on these numbers—that any input fails to be encoded in some way; but with what computer would we track all of that? Wang et al. (2003) position this more simply in terms of the fact that the storage capacity on just one human brain is equivalent to 10^8,419 modern computers.

The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons (or nerve cells) and many more neuroglia (or glial cells) which serve to support and protect the neurons (although see the end of this page for more information on glial cells). Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections, equivalent by some estimates to a computer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor. Estimates of the human brain’s memory capacity vary wildly from 1 to 1,000 terabytes (for comparison, the 19 million volumes in the US Library of Congress represents about 10 terabytes of data). 10

The brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. 8 That is not all the brains on Earth, nor all human brains, but merely a single brain of a single human. With over 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, and a quadrillion synapses, or connections, it is, as one researcher described, “truly awesome.”Researchers have found that the brain’s complexity is beyond anything they’d imagined, or as one evolutionist admitted, almost to the point of being “beyond belief.”

Amidst all these nerve cells and connections, a key question is: “Exactly which nerve cells do all these connections link together?” These connections should reveal a great deal about how the brain works, for while a single nerve cell may be enormously complex, it is in the massive networking of these many neurons that the brain’s fantastic processing and cognitive powers are likely to emerge. Now new research is mapping out all these connections in the mouse brain.

It was a massive imaging job and it has produced almost two petabytes of data. The result is a high-level view of the mouse brain’s wiring diagram. The diagram is like a map of the major freeways and highways between cities, except the brain's mapping is in three dimensions and is far more complex. Future work will zoom in to reveal the city streets, but for now scientists can see the major data flows in the mouse brain. What they see are highly specific patterns in the connections between different brain regions. They also see that the strengths of these connections vary by more than five orders of magnitude. While there is still much to learn and understand about this wiring diagram, it is a fascinating peek at this most complex of structures in the known universe. One finding that has emerged from this, and previous studies of the brain, is that there is no evidence the brain could have arisen spontaneously as evolutionists claim. Indeed, beyond theoretical speculation with no empirical support, evolutionists have no idea how natural selection, acting on random mutations and the like, could have created the brain. But they are certain that the brain must have evolved.

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1377-the-human-brain-marvel-of-design

The human brain: “The human brain itself serves, in some sense, a proof of concept…. Its dense network of neurons apparently operates at a petaFLOPS or higher level. Yet the whole device fits in a 1 liter box and uses only about 10 watts of power.” (Ivars Peterson, “Petacrunchers: Setting a Course toward Ultrafast Supercomputing”, Science News, Vol. 147. 15 April 1995, p. 235).

"Of all the objects in the universe, the human brain is the most complex. There are as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy." 4

A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies.
One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. 5

The human brain...simultaneously processes an amazing amount of information. Your brain takes in all the colors and objects you see, the temperature around you, the pressure of your feet against the floor, the sounds around you, the dryness of your mouth, even the texture of your keyboard. Your brain holds and processes all your emotions, thoughts and memories. At the same time your brain keeps track of the ongoing functions of your body like your breathing pattern, eyelid movement, hunger and movement of the muscles in your hands.

The human brain processes more than a million messages a second.  Your brain weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant. This screening function is what allows you to focus and operate effectively in your world. The brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, an influential evolutionist speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1929, as told by Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 57. [Even greater capabilities of the brain have been discovered since 1929.  Undoubtedly, more remain.]

“To my mind the human brain is the most marvelous and mysterious object in the whole universe and no geologic period seems too long to allow for its natural evolution.”

Isaac Asimov
“In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can’t Even Break Even,” Smithsonian, August 1970, p. 10.

“And in Man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.”

Asimov seems to have forgotten that the brain, and presumably most of its details, is coded by only a fraction of an individual’s DNA. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that DNA is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter known in the universe.

Ivars Peterson, “PetaCrunchers: Setting a Course toward Ultrafast Supercomputing,” Science News, Vol. 147, 15 April 1995, p. 235.
The human brain is frequently likened to a supercomputer. In most respects, the brain greatly exceeds any computer’s capabilities. Speed is one area where the computer beats the brain—at least in some ways. For example, few of us can quickly multiply 0.0239 times 854.95. This task is called a floating point operation, because the decimal point “floats” until we (or a computer) decide where to place it. The number of Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) is a measure of a computer’s speed. As of 2013, China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer holds the record at 33,900 trillion FLOPS (33.9 petaFLOPS). One challenge is to prevent these superfast computers from overheating, because too much electrically generated heat is dissipated in a too small a volume.

Our brains operate at petaFLOPS speeds—without overheating. One knowledgeable observer on these ultrafast computers commented:

The human brain itself serves, in some sense, as a proof of concept [that cool petaFLOPS machines are possible]. Its dense network of neurons apparently operates at a petaFLOPS or higher level. Yet the whole device fits in a 1 liter box and uses only about 10 watts of power. That’s a hard act to follow.

Also, the 1,400 cubic centimeter (3 pound) human brain is more than three times larger than that of a chimpanzee, and when adjusted for body weight and size, larger than that of any other animal. How, then, could the brain have evolved? Why haven’t more animals evolved large, “petaFLOP” brains?

Denton, pp. 330–331.
“The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibres by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 10^15 or a thousand million million. ... a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth.”
Deborah M. Barnes, “Brain Architecture: Beyond Genes,” Science, Vol. 233, 11 July 1986, p. 155.
“... the human brain probably contains more than 10^14 synapses ...

A related subject is the flexibility and redundancy of the human brain, which evolution or natural selection would not produce. For example, every year brain surgeons successfully remove up to half of a person’s brain. The remaining half gradually takes over functions of the removed half. Also, brain functions are often regained after portions of the brain are accidently destroyed. Had humans evolved, such accidents would have been fatal before these amazing capabilities developed. Darwin was puzzled by the phenomenal capability of the brain. 6

Alfred Russel Wallace, who some mistakenly say co-discoverer (with Charles Darwin) natural selection, believed the human brain was too complex to have evolved, because other primates got along fine with much smaller brains. Wallace thought the human brain—orders of magnitude more capable in many ways—must have been created by a superior intelligence, because early primates had no need for art, philosophy, or morality. Darwin recognized the logic of Wallace’s argument, but complained in a letter to Wallace in 1869, “I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child [the theory of evolution].” [See James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1916), p. 240.]

C. S. Lewis put it in another way:
If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance that the sound of the wind in the trees

C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 52–53.
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts—i.e. of Materialism and Astronomy—are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn, an influential evolutionist speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1929, as told by Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 57. [Even greater capabilities of the brain have been discovered since 1929.  Undoubtedly, more remain.]

“To my mind the human brain is the most marvelous and mysterious object in the whole universe and no geologic period seems too long to allow for its natural evolution.”

Isaac Asimov, “In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can’t Even Break Even,” Smithsonian, August 1970, p. 10.
“And in Man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.”

Asimov seems to have forgotten that the brain, and presumably most of its details, is coded by only a fraction of an individual’s DNA. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that DNA is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter known in the universe.

Ivars Peterson, “PetaCrunchers: Setting a Course toward Ultrafast Supercomputing,” Science News, Vol. 147, 15 April 1995, p. 235.
The human brain is frequently likened to a supercomputer. In most respects, the brain greatly exceeds any computer’s capabilities. Speed is one area where the computer beats the brain—at least in some ways. For example, few of us can quickly multiply 0.0239 times 854.95. This task is called a floating point operation, because the decimal point “floats” until we (or a computer) decide where to place it. The number of Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) is a measure of a computer’s speed. As of 2013, China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer holds the record at 33,900 trillion FLOPS (33.9 petaFLOPS). One challenge is to prevent these superfast computers from overheating, because too much electrically generated heat is dissipated in a too small a volume.

Our brains operate at petaFLOPS speeds—without overheating. One knowledgeable observer on these ultrafast computers commented:

The human brain itself serves, in some sense, as a proof of concept [that cool petaFLOPS machines are possible]. Its dense network of neurons apparently operates at a petaFLOPS or higher level. Yet the whole device fits in a 1 liter box and uses only about 10 watts of power. That’s a hard act to follow.

Also, the 1,400 cubic centimeter (3 pound) human brain is more than three times larger than that of a chimpanzee, and when adjusted for body weight and size, larger than that of any other animal. How, then, could the brain have evolved? Why haven’t more animals evolved large, “petaFLOP” brains?

Denton, pp. 330–331.
“The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibres by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 10^15 or a thousand million million. ... a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth.”

Deborah M. Barnes, “Brain Architecture: Beyond Genes,” Science, Vol. 233, 11 July 1986, p. 155.
“... the human brain probably contains more than 10^14 synapses ...



 


100 billion neuron cells, each linked to as many as 10,000 other neurons, 10^15 total synaptic connections, 10^16 operations per second which exceeds all the computers in the world put together. "This means that the most powerful "electrical" computer system in the world resides in the top of your head."


http://www.buzzle.com/articles/brain-regions-and-their-functions.html



http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-02-previously-unknown-brain-regions.html

Previously unknown process explains how brain regions work together, or alone

Our brains have billions of neurons grouped into different regions. These regions often work alone, but sometimes must join forces. How do regions communicate selectively?
Stanford researchers may have solved a riddle about the inner workings of the brain, which consists of billions of neurons, organized into many different regions, with each region primarily responsible for different tasks.
The various regions of the brain often work independently, relying on the neurons inside that region to do their work. At other times, however, two regions must cooperate to accomplish the task at hand.
The riddle is this: what mechanism allows two brain regions to communicate when they need to cooperate yet avoid interfering with one another when they must work alone?
In a paper published today in Nature Neuroscience, a team led by Stanford electrical engineering professor Krishna Shenoy reveals a previously unknown process that helps two brain regions cooperate when joint action is required to perform a task.
"This is among the first mechanisms reported in the literature for letting brain areas process information continuously but only communicate what they need to," said Matthew T. Kaufman, who was a postdoctoral scholar in the Shenoy lab when he co-authored the paper.
Kaufman initially designed his experiments to study how preparation helps the brain make fast and accurate movements – something that is central to the Shenoy lab's efforts to build prosthetic devices controlled by the brain.
But the Stanford researchers used a new approach to examine their data that yielded some findings that were broader than arm movements.
The Shenoy lab has been a pioneer in analyzing how large numbers of neurons function as a unit. As they applied these new techniques to study arm movements, the researchers discovered a way that different regions of the brain keep results localized or broadcast signals to recruit other regions as needed.
"Our neurons are always firing, and they're always connected," explained Kaufman, who is now pursuing brain research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. "So it's important to control what signals are communicated from one area to the next."

Experimental design

The scientists derived their findings by studying monkeys that had been trained to make precise arm movements. The monkeys were taught to pause briefly before making the reach, thus letting their brain prepare for a moment before moving.
Remember, the goal was to help build brain-controlled prostheses. Because the neurons in the brain always send out signals, engineers must be able to differentiate the command to act from the signals that accompany preparation.
To understand how this worked with the monkey's arm, the scientists took electrical readings at three places during the experiments: from the arm muscles, and from each of two motor cortical regions in the brain known to control arm movements.
The muscle readings enabled the scientists to ascertain what sorts of signals the arm receives during the preparatory state compared with the action step.
The brain readings were more complex.
Two regions control arm movements. They are located near the top center of the brain, an inch to the side.
Each of the two regions is made up of more than 20 million neurons. The scientists wanted to understand the behavior of both regions, but they couldn't probe millions of neurons. So they took readings from carefully chosen samples of about 100 to 200 individual neurons in each of the two regions.
During experiments the scientists examined the monkeys' brain readings at two levels.
On one level, they considered the activity of individual neurons – how quickly or slowly the neurons fired signals.
At a higher level, the scientists also identified patterns of changes in the activity of many neurons. This is a relatively new technique for neuroscience, called a population and dimensionality analysis. Its goal is to understand how neurons work together in entire regions of the brain.

Hunting for the signal

The key findings emerged from understanding how individual neurons worked together as a population to drive the muscles.
As the monkey prepared for movement but held its arm still, many neurons in both of the motion-control regions registered big changes in activity.
But this preparatory activity did not drive the movement. Why?
The scientists realized that, during the preparatory stage, the brain carefully balanced the activity changes of all those individual neurons inside each region. While some neurons fired faster, others slowed down so that the entire population broadcast a constant message to the muscles.
But at the moment of action, the population readings changed in a measurable and consistent way.
By looking at the data, the scientists could correlate these changes at the population level to the flexing of the muscles. This change at the population level differentiated action from preparation.

Broader ramifications

The Stanford researchers put great effort into the mathematical analysis of their data. They had to be sure that each of the two populations of neurons exhibited the key muscle-controlling changes in activity when (and only when) the muscles flexed. This was the signal they had set out to find.
Kaufman said he was about one year into what turned out to be a three-year project when he realized there might be broader ramifications to this population-level and dimensionality identification idea.
He was presenting an early version of the brain-to-muscle results at a scientific conference when a question from one his peers caused him to think. He had found population-level signals between the brain regions and the muscles. Did the two brain regions, each partially in control of the action, couple and uncouple with each other in a similar way?
"I started the analysis in my hotel room that night at one a.m.," Kaufman recalled. "Soon enough, the results were clear."
"The serendipitous interplay between basic science and engineering never ceases to amaze me," said Professor Shenoy, who is also professor of neurobiology (by courtesy) and bioengineering (affiliate), and a Bio-X faculty member. "Some of the best ideas for the design of prosthetic systems to help people with paralysis come from basic neuroscience research, as is the case here, and some of the deepest scientific insights come from engineering measurement and medical systems."

The human brain has so many neurons (almost as many as the stars in the Milky Way) that the real complexity comes when billions of these flickering cells, crackling with activity, are placed in close proximity and then are
woven together with branches and support cells and multiple kinds of neurotransmitters. This complexity makes a human brain the most complex known object in the universe. 9
As a child’s brain grows, neurons connect and reconnect, forming networks guided by proteins. Even before birth, patterned waves fire from the retinas through the brain that look like the waves seen after birth when the eyes look around. It’s as if the neuron symphony is tuning up and practicing for the post- birth experience. After birth, when a neuron fires repeatedly, that connection grows stronger. I imagine it thickening when it fires.

1) Chapter 2 Introduction to Brain Anatomy Wieslaw L. Nowinski
2) http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/
3. http://www.creationhistory.com/CreationMessages/The_Brain_and_the_Bible.shtml
4. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html
5. http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html
6. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ReferencesandNotes40.html#wp1013782
7. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com.br/2013/12/the-brain-most-incredible-information.html
8. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com.br/
9. A World from Dust, Farland, page 219
10. http://www.human-memory.net/brain_neurons.html
11. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2182987-your-brain-is-like-100-billion-mini-computers-all-working-together/?utm_medium=SOC&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1Hg-8OML6QrKablCrdmpzl0V_gCnHYRXXFx1IrTFFEIYlw84m4FsySJio#Echobox=1539875070
12. http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royptb/371/1700/20150428.full.pdf


Further readings : 
http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/
http://cavern.uark.edu/~cdm/creation/presentation.htm
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/04/brain-depicted-with-gold-leaf/

The Human Brain Is ‘Beyond Belief’ by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * – 2017
Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,,
Perfect Optimization
The scientists found that at multiple hierarchical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell clusters (ganglion), and even at the individual cell level, the positioning of neural units achieved a goal that human engineers strive for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect minimizing of connection costs among all the system’s components.,,,
Vast Computational Power
Researchers discovered that a single synapse is like a computer’s microprocessor containing both memory-storage and information-processing features.,,, Just one synapse alone can contain about 1,000 molecular-scale microprocessor units acting in a quantum computing environment. An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in perspective, one of the researchers revealed that the study’s results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.1,,,
Phenomenal Processing Speed
the processing speed of the brain had been greatly underrated. In a new research study, scientists found the brain is 10 times more active than previously believed.6,7,,,
The large number of dendritic spikes also means the brain has more than 100 times the computational capabilities than was previously believed.,,,
Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity
Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9,,,
Optimal Energy Efficiency
Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,,
Multidimensional Processing
It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13
He also said:
We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13,,,
Biophoton Brain Communication
Neurons contain many light-sensitive molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochondria machines that produce energy inside cells contain several different light-responsive molecules called chromophores. This research suggests that light channeled by filamentous cellular structures called microtubules plays an important role in helping to coordinate activities in different regions of the brain.,,,
https://www.icr.org/article/10186

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com.br/2013/12/the-brain-most-incredible-information.html

The Brain: Most Incredible Information Processing Device Known

New research is now indicating that the brain is even more powerful than previously thought. A nerve cell, or neuron, can be thought of as having inputs and outputs. The basic output is an electrical signal that travels down the tail of the neuron called the axon. The axon may connect to tissue, such as muscle via a connection called a synapse. The synapse may also connect the axon to another neuron, and this leads us to the input side of the neuron. The input branches, leading from the synapse to the central body of the neuron, are called dendrites. So for a given neuron, there are a number of input signals coming from the dendrites, and a number of output signals at the tail end of the axon. But what happens in between? Aside from merely propagating these electrical signals, somewhere the neuron needs to do some processing of the input signals, which determines the output signals that are generated. How does this processing work, and where does it occur?

The new research indicates that while dendrites have been thought mainly to transmit signals, they also perform substantial processing as well. As one of the researchers explained:

   This work shows that dendrites, long thought to simply funnel incoming signals towards the soma, instead play a key role in sorting and interpreting the enormous barrage of inputs received by the neuron. Dendrites thus act as miniature computing devices for detecting and amplifying specific types of input.


Or as another researcher concluded, “Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought.” This work, he added, is a little bit like reverse engineering a piece of foreign technology:

   Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about.


That is how science works, and it contradicts the evolutionist’s claim that evolutionary theory is required to perform life science research. Nothing could be further from the truth. Assumptions of evolution not only are unnecessary, they get in the way. Science analyzes nature and figures out how it works.

These findings also contradict the evolutionist’s claim that evolution is a fact, for evolutionists have no explanation, beyond vague and silly story-telling, for how such a marvel as the brain and its neurons could have evolved. The metaphysics makes evolution a fact, but from a strictly scientific perspective, evolution is a bizarre and inane theory.

Religion drives science and it matters.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729032.000-mind-maths-small-world-with-big-connections.html

If you stretched out all the nerve fibres in the brain, they would wrap four times around the globe. Crammed into the skull, this wiring looks like a tangled mess, but in fact mathematicians know its structure well - it is a form of the "small-world network".

The hallmark of a small-world network is the relatively short path between any two nodes. You've probably already heard of the famous "six degrees of separation" between you and anyone else in the world, which reflects the small-world structure of human societies. The average number of steps between any two brain regions is similarly small, and slight variations in this interconnectivity have been linked to measures of intelligence.

That may be because a small-world structure makes communication between different areas of a network rapid and efficient. Relatively few long-range connections are involved - just 1 in 25 nerve fibres connect distant brain regions, while the rest join neurons in their immediate vicinity. Long nerve fibres are costly to build and maintain, says Martijn van den Heuvel at the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands, so a small-world-network architecture may be the best compromise between the cost of these fibres and the efficiency of messaging.

The brain's long-range connections aren't distributed evenly over the brain, though. Last year van den Heuvel and Olaf Sporns of Indiana University Bloomington discovered that clusters of these connections form a strong "backbone" that shuttles traffic between a dozen principal brain regions (see diagram). The backbone and these brain regions are together called a "rich club", reflecting the abundance of its interconnections.

No one knows why the brain is home to a rich club, says van den Heuvel, but it is clearly important because it carries so much traffic. That makes any problems here potentially very serious. "There's an emerging idea that perhaps schizophrenia is really a problem with integrating information within these rich-club hubs," he says. Improving rich-club traffic flow might be the best form of treatment, though it is not easy to say how that might be achieved.

What is clear for now is that this highly interconnected network is the perfect platform for our mental gymnastics, and it forms a backdrop for many of the other mathematical principles behind our thoughts and behaviour.

The brain, marvel of engineering

The bit capacity of the human brain (86 billion neurons) at 10^8,342 bits (Wang, Liu & Wang, 2003) exceeds the bit capacity of the entire universe at 10^120 bits upon which a maximum of 10^90 bits could have been operated on in the last 14 billion years (Lloyd, 2002). [YES...I meant to write 10 raised to the 8,342 power] In order to put such numbers into perspective, realize that the number of elementary particles (protons, neutron, electrons) in the physical universe is only 10^80. I have serious doubts—based on these numbers—that any input fails to be encoded in some way; but with what computer would we track all of that? Wang et al. (2003) position this more simply in terms of the fact that the storage capacity on just one human brain is equivalent to 10^8,419 modern computers.

[Seth Lloyd has some interesting articles on quantum computing, which is the only remotely possible way to do this...but I think it's too early to say right now]

References
Lloyd, S. (2002). Computational capacity of the universe. Physical Review Letters 2002, 88:237901–237908. Retrieved from

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110141

Wang, Y., Liu, D., & Wang, Y. (2003). Discovering the Capacity of Human Memory. Brain & Mind, 4(2), 189-198.

Cerebral Probabilities

Here is the reason Darwin specifically eliminated the origin of the mind from his theoretical discussion: The complexity of the human brain, let alone the human mind, is far more than any stretch of evolutionary theory can possibly accommodate. So Darwin eliminated it from the evolutionary discussion with a stroke of denial. (See “Darwin’s Dodge”, in the Paradox section of the Appendix).

We aren’t that naïve or lacking in intellectual integrity. Here are some stats (1) to consider:

The Cerebral Cortex (part of the brain):

•Contains 9,200,000,000 neurons (9.2 x 10 9);

•Contains 1,000,000,000,000,000 (10 15) neural interconnections.

•The earth is 3,500,000,000 years old, give or take a little.

So,

Assuming gradual mutation of the cortex, say a daily constant rate from the beginning of the earth (A very generous assumption!), the successful mutations required for development of the cortex is:

(10 15) / (3.5x10 9) = 2.86 x 10 7 (interconnects/year)

And,

(2.86 x 10 7) / 365 = 0.78 x 10 5 (interconnects/day)

Or, to restate,

78,000 new, successful new neural interconnections…each and every day, for 3.5 billion years.

The likelihood of this is clearly negligible. It is another Falsification of Darwinism.

Beyond Belief

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com.br/

As we have seen before

the brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. That is not all the brains on Earth, nor all human brains, but merely a single brain of a single human. With over 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, and a quadrillion synapses, or connections, it is, as one researcher described, “truly awesome.”Researchers have found that the brain’s complexity is beyond anything they’d imagined, or as one evolutionist admitted, almost to the point of being “beyond belief.”

Amidst all these nerve cells and connections, a key question is: “Exactly which nerve cells do all these connections link together?” These connections should reveal a great deal about how the brain works, for while a single nerve cell may be enormously complex, it is in the massive networking of these many neurons that the brain’s fantastic processing and cognitive powers are likely to emerge. Now new research is mapping out all these connections in the mouse brain.

It was a massive imaging job and it has produced almost two petabytes of data. The result is a high-level view of the mouse brain’s wiring diagram. The diagram is like a map of the major freeways and highways between cities, except the brain's mapping is in three dimensions and is far more complex. Future work will zoom in to reveal the city streets, but for now scientists can see the major data flows in the mouse brain. What they see are highly specific patterns in the connections between different brain regions. They also see that the strengths of these connections vary by more than five orders of magnitude. While there is still much to learn and understand about this wiring diagram, it is a fascinating peek at this most complex of structures in the known universe. One finding that has emerged from this, and previous studies of the brain, is that there is no evidence the brain could have arisen spontaneously as evolutionists claim. Indeed, beyond theoretical speculation with no empirical support, evolutionists have no idea how natural selection, acting on random mutations and the like, could have created the brain. But they are certain that the brain must have evolved.

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/07/03/evolutionary-origins-of-the-nervous-system/

Neurons are specialized to communicate with one another, and this communication takes place at a structure called the synapse, a miniscule gap of about 40 nanometres found at the junction between adjacent cells. For the signalling to be effective, it is crucial that all the proteins involved are organized correctly. On both sides of the synapse (at the presynaptic and postsynaptic membranes) the signalling components are organized by a scaffold of proteins called the pre- and postsynaptic densities. These structures are a specialization of the cytoskeleton found just beneath the pre- and post-synaptic nerve cell membranes. The density is an extremely complex and highly dynamic network – in humans it contains perhaps several hundred different types of protein – which organizes the molecular machinery needed for a neuron to detect and respond to the chemical signals sent to it by adjacent cells, and mediates the movements of the machinery within the membrane in response to neuronal activity.

In the PLoS One study, Kenneth Kosic and his colleagues from the University of California at Santa Barbara analyzed the Amphimedon genome, and found that it contains 36 families of genes known to encode proteins of the post-synaptic density. So, even though it has no neurons, this sea sponge synthesizes an almost complete set of post-synaptic density proteins. A comparison of the DNA sequences from the 36 sea sponge genes with the homologous sequences from humans, Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and Nematostella vectensis (a cnidarian with a simple nervous system consisting of a loose network of nerves) revealed striking similarities between the genes in all four species. One gene, called dlg, encodes a crucial component of the post-synaptic density scaffold. The protein product of that gene contains a number of regions that form the protein-protein bonds that hold the scaffold together. The segment of the dlg gene encoding these binding regions was found to be highly conserved – the DNA sequences in the sea sponge gene were identical to the human sequences. This suggests that in the sea sponge these proteins interact in exactly the same way as they do in the human postsynaptic density.

– it shows that brain complexity, rather than size, may be the most important factor which determines the behavioural repertoire of an organism.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, an influential evolutionist speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1929, as told by Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 57. [Even greater capabilities of the brain have been discovered since 1929.  Undoubtedly, more remain.]

“To my mind the human brain is the most marvelous and mysterious object in the whole universe and no geologic period seems too long to allow for its natural evolution.”

Ivars Peterson, “PetaCrunchers: Setting a Course toward Ultrafast Supercomputing,” Science News, Vol. 147, 15 April 1995, p. 235.

The human brain is frequently likened to a supercomputer. In most respects, the brain greatly exceeds any computer’s capabilities. Speed is one area where the computer beats the brain—at least in some ways. For example, few of us can quickly multiply 0.0239 times 854.95. This task is called a floating point operation, because the decimal point “floats” until we (or a computer) decide where to place it. The number of Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) is a measure of a computer’s speed. As of 2013, China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer holds the record at 33,900 trillion FLOPS (33.9 petaFLOPS). One challenge is to prevent these superfast computers from overheating, because too much electrically generated heat is dissipated in a too small a volume.

Our brains operate at petaFLOPS speeds—without overheating. One knowledgeable observer on these ultrafast computers commented:

The human brain itself serves, in some sense, as a proof of concept [that cool petaFLOPS machines are possible]. Its dense network of neurons apparently operates at a petaFLOPS or higher level. Yet the whole device fits in a 1 liter box and uses only about 10 watts of power. That’s a hard act to follow.

http://www.discoveryofdesign.com/id69.html

Our Brain à Supercomputers

Computers have come a long way but they still primitive compared with our own brainpower. Our brains can handle much more information and processing than any supercomputer yet developed. The brain is so far superior to current computers that scientists seek ways to mimic its “wiring” in modern computers.

Researchers using the brain as a model place organic molecules called DDQ on a gold substrate or base as a replacement for silicon chips. These molecules have several properties that make them ideal for computers. First, current computers use just two binary signals, 0 and 1. All of the pictures, words, and links that a computer screen shows are produced from combinations of those two digits. The DDQ computer, however, uses four signals: 0, 1, 2, and 3. In addition, each molecule can connect with up to 300 others at the same time, similar to the way neurons behave in the brain. This powerful behavior is called parallel processing. In contrast, current computers typically communicate with only one circuit at a time, called linear processing. All of this means that the new DDQ computer can work much faster and more efficiently than any other computer to date. It even has the ability to analyze complex, random events such as natural calamities and epidemics.

Computers continue to improve and the DDQ computer is a long technological leap forward. As a molecular machine it can even “heal” itself if a connection is damaged, and can organize itself into networks. Our brain, which has been working well ever since the Creation Week, is a true masterpiece. It should humble us that the best designs of human engineers are those copied from the work of the Master Designer.
Reference

Goodrich, Marcia. 2010. Lessons from the Brain: Toward an intelligent computer. Michigan Tech News. http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2010/april/story25874.html

http://news.yale.edu/2013/12/26/human-brain-development-symphony-three-movements

Human brain development is a symphony in three movements – Dec. 2013
Excerpt: The human brain develops with an exquisitely timed choreography marked by distinct patterns of gene activity at different stages from the womb to adulthood, Yale researchers report in the Dec. 26 issue of the journal Neuron.,,,
Intriguingly, say the researchers, some of the same patterns of genetic activity that define this human “hour glass” sketch were not observed in developing monkeys, indicating that they may play a role in shaping the features specific to human brain development.

Thinking about the Brain 1

Introduction

There is one particular aspect of design which is so powerful, so convincing, that it almost seems unfair to challenge evolution with it. The reference is to our brain, the greatest concentration of chemo-neurological order and complexity in the physical universe. It is a video camera and library, a computer and communication center, all in one. And the more the brain is used the better it becomes! A detailed picture of the human brain is slowly emerging, the origin of which seems entirely beyond comprehension from a naturalistic point of view. We see remarkable purpose and interdependence within the brain—every part works for the benefit of the whole. Such features are not totally understood; the brain is unable fully to understand itself. As always, we cannot fully understand the created, intricate details of the present-day world.

Description of the Brain

The adult brain weighs about 1350 grams, just three pounds, yet it handles the information of 1000 supercomputers. The fundamental unit within the brain is the neuron, or nerve cell. Each cell, about 10-6 meter in diameter, contains a nucleus and branching fibers called dendrites and axons. When a cell "fires," it sends electrochemical impulses along its axon extension to neighboring neurons. These signals, or brain-wave patterns, are in the range of microvolts.  Our brain contains about 10 billion neurons (10^10). During the first nine months of life, these neurons form at the astounding rate of 25,000 per minute.

Dendrites

Each neuron is in dendritic contact with perhaps 10,000 other neurons. The total number of neurological interconnections is on the order of 10^14(100 trillion). This number is equivalent to all the leaves on all the trees of a vast forest covering half of the U.S. The total length of the nerve dendrites in an adult brain is over 100,000 miles!  At any given moment the many dendrite connections can be visualized as light switches that are either on (firing) or off, controlled by a chemical transmitter. Thus the brain holds at least 1014 bits (binary digits) of information. Actually, it is a much greater number, since the neurons also show intermediate firing states, somewhat like a light-dimmer switch. Consequently, the brain shows both digital and analog characteristics. At any given moment, perhaps 10% of the brain cells are firing, at a frequency of about 100 hertz. This implies a rate of 1015signals or computations every second. For comparison, the Cray-2 supercomputer's speed is 109 computations per second, with a storage capacity of 1011 bits. Thus, the storage capacity of this supercomputer is 1,000 times less than that of the human brain. Table I shows the memory capacity of several systems. Note that the potential brain capacity is estimated as at least equivalent to that of 25 million volumes, a 500-mile-long bookshelf! Clearly, the brain is far more advanced than any computer ever produced. This computer analogy should not be carried too far, however, because brain organization is unlike anything else encountered in technology or nature.

1) http://www.icr.org/article/thinking-about-brain/

Study: The Human Brain Has an Almost Ideal Network of Connections

The Brain Was Evolutionarily Designed?

Perhaps the most unlikely part, of all the many unlikely parts, of evolutionary theory is the evolution of the brain, with all that that entails, including 200 billion nerve cells, one quadrillion synapses, and the thousand or more molecular-scale switches in each synapse. Not surprisingly researchers sometimes can hardly find the words to express what they are studying. The brain is “truly awesome” beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief. And so far we’re only talking about the brain’s physical wonders. On top of all that there is consciousness, will and all those feelings and emotions we have. There is, not surprisingly, no evolutionary explanation for how the brain evolved. And a new study on how information is transferred within the brain now adds yet another intriguing aspect to the problem.


The researchers used a network analysis approach, and considered the tradeoff between the number of connections made and the number of information routing pathways connecting disparate locations. In this simple model, the transfer of information is optimized by minimizing the number of connections while maximizing the direct routings.

Of course the human brain undoubtedly has many more functions and requirements to fulfill, but interestingly their data showed a striking fit. According to their findings the structure of the human brain has an almost ideal network of connections. As the lead researcher explained, “That means the brain was evolutionarily designed to be very, very close to what our algorithm shows.” As usual, the infinitive form reveals the underlying teleological thinking. Aristotle is dead, long live Aristotle.

But that is the least of evolution’s problems. What is striking, and a dead giveaway, is the high confidence of evolutionists. There is no question that evolutionary theory has its challenges. This study of the brain’s information transfer is yet another example of this. The researchers of this study, in spite of statements about evolution, have no scientific theory for how the brain could have evolved. Nothing.

This paper provides yet another example that it is not exactly obvious that the world arose spontaneously (and that is putting it gently). In fact, science tells us the exact opposite. And yet evolutionists insist that evolution is a fact—no question about it. It would be, evolutionists like to say, perverse to say anything less. Those over-the-top claims by evolutionists tell all. This isn’t about science.

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com.br/2015/07/study-human-brain-has-almost-ideal.html

Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth

Excerpt: They found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study: ...One synapse, by itself, is more like a
microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet
connections on Earth.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20023112-247.html

New Estimate Boosts the Human Brain's Memory Capacity 10-Fold

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-estimate-boosts-the-human-brain-s-memory-capacity-10-fold/

The human brain’s memory-storage capacity is an order of magnitude greater than previously thought, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies reported last week. The findings, recently detailed in eLife, are significant not only for what they say about storage space but more importantly because they nudge us toward a better understanding of how, exactly, information is encoded in our brains.
The question of just how much information our brains can hold is a longstanding one. We know that the human brain is made up of about 100 billion neurons, and that each one makes 1,000 or more connections to other neurons, adding up to some100 trillion in total.We also know that the strengths of these connections, or synapses, are regulated by experience. When two neurons on either side of a synapse are active simultaneously, that synapse becomes more robust; the dendritic spine (the antenna on the receiving neuron) also becomes larger to support the increased signal strength. These changes in strength and size are believed to be the molecular correlates of memory. The different antenna sizes are often compared with bits of computer code, only instead of 1s and 0s they can assume a range of values. Until last week scientists had no idea how many values, exactly. Based on crude measurements, they had identified just three: small, medium and large.
But a curious observation led the Salk team to refine those measurements. In the course of reconstructing a rat hippocampus, an area of the mammalian brain involved in memory storage, they noticed some neurons would form two connections with each other: the axon (or sending cable) of one neuron would connect with two dendritic spines (or receiving antennas) on the same neighboring neuron, suggesting that duplicate messages were being passed from sender to receiver. Because both dendrites were receiving identical information, the researchers suspected they would be similar in size and strength. But they also realized that if there were significant differences between the two, it could point to a whole new layer of complexity. If the spines were of a different shape or size, they reasoned, the message they passed along would also be slightly different, even if that message was coming from the same axon.
So they decided to measure the synapse pairs. And sure enough, they found an 8 percent size difference between dendritic spines connected to the same axon of a signaling neuron. That difference might seem small, but when they plugged the value into their algorithms, they calculated a total of 26 unique synapse sizes. A greater number of synapse sizes means more capacity for storing information, which in this case translated into a 10-fold greater storage capacity in the hippocampus as a whole than the previous three-size model had indicated. “It’s an order of magnitude more capacity than we knew was there,” says Tom Bartol, a staff scientist at the Salk Institute and the study’s lead author.
But if our memory capacity is so great, why do we forget things? Because capacity is not really the issue, says Paul Reber, a memory researcher at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study, “Any analysis of the number of neurons will lead to a sense of the tremendous capacity of the human brain. But it doesn’t matter because our storage process is slower than our experience of the world. Imagine an iPod with infinite storage capacity. Even if you can store every song ever written, you still have to buy and upload all that music and then pull individual songs up when you want to play them.”
Reber says that it is almost impossible to quantify the amount of information in the human brain, in part because it consists of so much more information than we’re consciously aware of: not only facts and faces and measurable skills but basic functions like how to speak and move and higher order ones like how to feel and express emotions. “We take in much more information from the world than ‘what do I remember from yesterday?’” Reber says. “And we still don’t really know how to scale up from computing synaptic strength to mapping out these complex processes.”
The Salk study brings us a bit closer, though. “They’ve done an amazing reconstruction,” Reber says. “And it adds significantly to our understanding of not only memory capacity but more importantly of how complex memory storage actually is.” The findings might eventually pave the way toward all manner of advances: more energy-efficient computers that mimic the human brain’s data-transmission strategies, for example, or a better understanding of brain diseases that involve dysfunctional synapses.
But first scientists will have to see if the patterns found in the hippocampus hold for other brain regions. Bartol’s team is already working to answer this question. They hope to map the chemicals, which pass from neuron to neuron, that have an even greater capacity than the variable synapses to store and transmit information. As far as a precise measurement of whole-brain capacity, “we are still a long way off,” Bartol says. “The brain still holds many, many more mysteries for us to discover.”

Basic Survival Skills

Brain structure and its origins : in development and in evolution of behavior and the mind / Gerald E. Schneider.

page 81

To survive, every animal from amoeba to human being must be able to perform certain basic actions (at least during active stages of its life). Most fundamental,are 

(1) locomotor approach and avoidance movements, 
(2) orienting (turning) toward or away from something, and 
(3) foraging behavior patterns and exploration of places and objects.

The secret power of the single cell

The brain is not a supercomputer in which the neurons are transistors; rather it is as if each individual neuron is itself a computer, and the brain a vast community of microscopic computers. But even this model is probably too simplistic since the neuron processes data flexibly and on disparate levels, and is therefore far superior to any digital system. If I am right, the human brain may be a trillion times more capable than we imagine, and “artificial intelligence” a grandiose misnomer. 

http://www.brianjford.com/a-10-NSc-single_cell.pdf

Our mental circuitry is more like Manhattan’s organized grid than London’s chaotic tangle. 

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1377-the-human-brain-marvel-of-design#5879

LONDON’S STREETS ARE a mess. Roads bend sharply, end abruptly, and meet each other at unlikely angles. Intuitively, you might think that the cells of our brain are arranged in a similarly haphazard pattern, forming connections in random places and angles. But a new study suggests that our mental circuitry is more like Manhattan’s organised grid than London’s chaotic tangle. It consists of sheets of fibres that intersect at right angles, with no diagonals anywhere to be seen.

Van Wedeen from Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study, says that his results came as a complete shock. “I was expecting it to be a pure mess,” he says. Instead, he found a regular criss-cross pattern like the interlocking fibres of a piece of cloth. …

Wedeen’s maps may not reveal all the details about the brain’s network, but it does show how that network is structured. “If you look at brain connections in an adult human, it’s really a massive puzzle how something so complex can emerge,” says Behrens. “If we can establish any sort of organisation, we get a clue about how these things grow. If it obeys some rules, you could start to work out how it follows those rules. You have something to hang onto.”

Scientists have been amazed to see that, instead of chaos, the connecting fibers are organized into an orderly 3D grid, where axons run up and down and left and right, minus any diagonals or tangles. Science magazine compares the brain’s 3D layout to New York City, with its streets running in two directions and buildings’ elevators running up and down. Strangely, in flat areas of the grid, the fibers overlap at precise 90 degree angles and weave together much like a fabric, the scientists say.

SUSAN SCUTTI, “10 FAQ ABOUT THE HUMAN CONNECTOME PROJECT, THE ASTONISHING SISTER OF NIH’S HUMAN GENOME PROJECT” AT MEDICAL DAILY (NOVEMBER 24, 2015)
https://www.medicaldaily.com/10-faq-about-human-connectome-project-astonishing-sister-nihs-human-genome-project-362650

ED YONG, “THE BRAIN IS FULL OF MANHATTAN-LIKE GRIDS” AT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (MARCH 29, 2012)
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/29/the-brain-is-full-of-manhattan-like-grids/

The Geometric Structure of the Brain Fiber Pathways
http://science.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.hk/content/335/6076/1628

Cortico-cortical pathways formed parallel sheets of interwoven paths in the longitudinal and medio-lateral axes, in which major pathways were local condensations. Cross-species homology was strong and showed
emergence of complex gyral connectivity by continuous elaboration of this grid structure. This architecture naturally supports functional spatio-temporal coherence, developmental path-finding, and incremental rewiring with correlated adaptation of structure and function in cerebral plasticity.

THE HUMAN BRAIN HAS GIVEN RESEARCHERS A BIG SURPRISE SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/09/the-human-brain-has-given-researchers-a-big-surprise/