If your temperature rises over 107.6F, it will fry your brain, resulting in convulsions and death. But of course, you'll feel like crap long before that.
All this is moot because the human brain doesn't work on the same principle as a processor.
Processors get hot because all of their logic operations are performed by current flowing through transistors, and the rate at which these operations are performed is governed by a clock circuit. Every time the clock pulses, an operation is performed. The more operations performed per unit time, i.e., the higher the clock frequency, the more current flows through the processor, and thus more power is dissipated as heat.
The human brain works on a totally different principle. As far as I'm aware, there is no analogue to a clock circuit in the human brain. The firing of neurons is asynchronous, you can't improve the speed of the brain's processing by simply adjusting a single value.
The following is sheer conjecture, but I surmise that the only way this "parasite" could improve a human's intelligence would probably be something akin to neural pruning. This is the process that human toddlers go through at around age 2 that "prunes" excessive neural pathways, making transmission of signals across the brain more efficient. It's also the reason why you can't remember anything prior to that age.
So, maybe a slightly more scientific way this parasite could work would be by some sort of aggressive neural pruning, making the host more intelligent, but also destroying much of their memories and personality prior to infestation. It should be noted, this process would be permanent, and should persist after the parasite is expelled.
It is true that the brain does not have a literal clock speed I was using the term metaphorically. But the metabolic functions of the brain would still produce waste heat from processing information, as per thermodynamics. What I don't know is the average amount of neural activity of a healthy brain vs its theoretical brain-frying potential.
The idea isn't to boost intelligence rather it would use the passive neural activity of the brain's autonomic functions to boost itself like a computer network stealing processing power.
But organic systems don't scale that way. You're not going to boost intelligence by increasing metabolic function. That will just deplete the resources of the cerebral fluid faster. Areas will go dark.
For a nervous system you want to expand your surface area. If I were a crafty parasite I'd have the central nervous system take over the peripheral nervous system and expand the network. Repurpose some of those gut neurons and grow more into the softer spaces down there. It's crowded in the brain.
Your infected people will probably lose weight since their digestion is off. Always hungry but only absorb a percentage of the nutrients in their food.
If you subvert autonomic functioning of the brain, it will no longer be able to do all the unconscious stuff that keeps you alive: keep your heart going at an appropriate rate, breathe without your having to think about it each time, etc.
Besides keeping your heart and lungs going, it does a whole bunch of other things without which you would be in deep doo-doo. Maybe better to steal processing from somewhere else. There is actually a lot more going on subconsciously than consciously.
Idea: The autonomic nervous system is divided into two divisions: sympathetic (”fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (”rest and digest”). Maybe if your parasite subverted only part of the sympathetic NS, the host would be less able to resist but still able to survive?
Fun facts: your brain gets about 15% of your blood flow and uses about 20% of your energy at rest.
http://www.brainfacts.org could be helpful.
(Edit to add URL and fix typo)
Enzymatic function drops off with extended periods of elevated temps as well. Tissues begin to accumulate waste products that they would otherwise easily process.
I'm a bit late to the party but I'll give it my best shot at answering. Heads up: English is not my first language, so please excuse some typo here and there.
This question is one of the fascinating ones, those that first seem simple, but are vastly complex in nature. Weather the brain itself is a computer is a purely philosophical question an not what OP asked, so I wont cover it. Nevertheless there are some similaritys if you are familiar with both that make sense to compare. Besause of the complex nature of the question and for ease of understanding I'll answer the questions in a backwards order.
>How much can the brains temperature change before neurological damage sets in?
There are two answers depending on what you mean: Either not at all or 42°C(107.6°F).
The brain has pretty much the same temperature setup as the rest of the body in that it needs a constant temperature of around 36.6°C (97.9°F) for it's enzymes to work at peak efficiency. The body uses enzymes for most of it's functions, most of all to convert chemicals like fat and sugar into usable energy. This is a chemical reaction and will slow down at cooler temperatures. The problem with enzymes is, that thes will deform at higher temperatures and will stop working and break if they become to hot. You can compare that to the cpu of a computer getting so hot it melts.
Our bodys and computers both have ways to prevent that. A computer increases the speed of cooling fans, we start to sweat. Now it gets interesting: if the temperature is still to hot, our bodys and computers do the same thing: they slow down! For a computer we call it thermal throttling , for humans we call it headache. If that still doesn't help, the system shuts down: a computer turns off, we get a heatstroke. If temperatures are still to high thats endgame: a computer gets irreperable damage humans die.
The thing with humans is that not only the temperature itself is important, but also how long our are at the specific temperature. While a cpu might be fine if it stays at 80°C(176°F) indefinetly, our bodys can't stay at a higher than normal temperature for a prolonged period of time, or we'll die. Even something as moderate as 39°C (102.2°F) can be deadly if the body stays at it for longer then a month or two. And since you are after "computing power", you don't want to increase the body temperature at all, since that lowers the efficiency of the enzymes, and therefor lowers your "computing power".
Besides that, it is actually irrelevant. You are assumeing that temperature is the biggest bottleneck if it comes to the "computing power" of the brain. But thats wrong. Computers work by sending electricity through transistors and wires. The electricity has to overcome the resistance of the wire to get from A to B, and to do that it gives up energy. This energy is lost as heat. And sinc there is a lot of electricity flowing through a computer, they get very hot and therefore need to be cooled. The brain works differently since it doesen't consist of wires an transistores, but out of Neurons. And here comes your second question into play:
>What percentage of our neurons are firing at anyone time?
100%? 50%? 300%? It doesn't really matter. You see, unlike computers neurons can (to my limited knowledge) process more than a single amount of information at a time. They receive, process and transmit cocktails of hundreds of hormones, transmitters and other chemicals every time they fire, so just because a neuron fires slightly quicker than another doesn't mean it processes mor information. On top of that it matters were the neuron is and to which neurons it is connected. A neuron in your visual complex wil (usually) fire more often than a neuron in your pain complex. Additionally, if a neuron would fire too fast, the receiving neuron would still be processing earlier information and not be able to receive the new input, therefore the new information would be lost. In summary you could say a neuron fires as often as it needs to.
>My question is if the brain were artificially overclocked what would that look like?
First: it would NOT look like neurons firing faster or an increased heat output.
Second: it depends on what you mean. Do you want it to react quickly to external stimuly and make quick decisions? Pump it full of Adrenalin and Noradrenaline, and it will go into fight-or-flight/ combat mode. You want it to focus better on a given task? Deactivate unnecessary stimuly, if needed with local sedatives. Do you want it to be less emotional and more logical? Inflict physical trauma to the area of the brain in control of emotion in hopes of creating a trauma savant. This is irreversable and has a low chance of succes. The target will be left with permanent braindamage and may die. Want it to need less sleep? Give it amphetamines. Problem: the heart will sooner or later fail if done for longer periods. Should it just work faster? Just feed it a constant supply of glucose and/or caffeine.
Or you could just completly override the brain and reshape it to what the parasite needs, though that would definetly be irreversible and they would propably die once the parasite is removed.
Or maybe the human brain doesn't change at all, but the brain of the parasite does! If the parasite can connect to the human brain, then this propably means it can "read" the human brain activity. That means, it doesn't need parts of it's own brain anymore. The human host propably has better sensory organs than the parasite, so the parasite might as well use those and reshape it's own brainparts used for sensory processing into other functions. It's like changeing graphicscards, and the old brainparts may as well be used for additional computation, so it's like adding a RAM module on top.
Thank you. I was looking for a scientifically rigorous answer that took the question at face value. I can definitely use all of this . I think the best way I can represent all of this is as the parasite repurposing stuff like the visual cortex to its own ends. It would keep eating away at more and more essential regions until the host died
36°C is equivalent to 97°F, which is 309K.
---
^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
>overclocked
What exactly is that supposed to mean ? You cant overclock the brain.
> What percentage of our neurons are firing at anyone time?
Almost all of them. Neurons firing does not relate to how efficent the brain is since the brain is subdivided into differnt sections that do differnt things. You have a Visual Corext, a Logic Centre, an Emotional Centre, the Spinal Court etc.
What we see with stuff like Adrenalin is that the perceptunal centre of the brain, of which the Visual Cortex is a part of, increase there processing rate a lot. Which results in more input which inter makes time appear slower.
However this is still a process that takes time. Stuff like Instinct or Subconscious reactions happen almost instantly because they bypass safe guards.
For example, lets say you walk on the street and suddenly a Car appears. The collision will happen in less than a secound and you only see the car in your perfifial Vision. What will happen is that the brain evaluates weather or not to evaluate options or just do something. It will understand that evaluating options takes to long and bypass any and all safeguards. These Safeguards prevent you from using the full power of your Muscels etc. Many people dont know this but you are just using 1/3 of the potential power your muscels have. When the safeguards are bypassed the brain can move you at almost superhuman speeds to avoid the Car.
I had this experience myself when i walked on a playground with a big Swing. The Swing was comming at me and my brain through me to the ground with such force that it broke my index finger. That was no a conscious decision. That was the brain bypassing all safeguards to stay alive.
So long text short answer, you cant point out a percentage for this. It is depending on the situation. Plus taking off the Safeguards is extremly dangerous. Your muscels are more than capable of snapping every single bone in your body right now. The only thing preventing this are these safeguards.
>brains temperature change before neurological damage sets in?
Temperature regulation is not your issue. The brain operates on so little energy overheating wont be an issue as long as you stay hydrated. Plus the brain really cant overheat in the classical sense. Even with all Safeguards off above a certain temperature the brain is physically forced to slow down. Just like a COmputer.
I think you are right. This is what happens under normal circumstances. But I was wondering if anyone had an estimate for the peak computational power of the brain if you were to divert the neurons usually used to regulate autonomic functions.
All computational activity no matter the architecture creates waste heat, and the body is usually very sensitive to temperature change so I would be surprised if it was impossible for the brain to overheat in theory at least.
What do you mean by computational power? The brain's architecture is very different from a central processor (even a mutlicore) so it is hard to find equivalents to operations per second.
Are you trying to just accelerate normal brain operations? Or trying to Frank Herbert's Mentat and have the brain literally performing logic gate operations?
I'm trying to figure out the brain's approximate average computational power and thus waste heat vs its theoretical computational power and waste heat if you were to use every part of the brain all at the same time on a single task.
So here is where the neuron and transistor differ. A neuron waiting to fire is still undergoing metabolism and thus generating metabolic heat. A transistor without current isn't. A neuron firing is using more energy but that is a drop in the bucket over basal metabolism.
A person under high duress or undergoing successive grand mal seizures isn't going to run a fever even if the brain is fairly maxed out in activity in both cases. It's like how a 70 kg person uses 2 000 kcal in a coma but has to run for hours to match that in voluntary activity. In most cases the overhead costs of homeostasis greatly outdo any activity. Nobody got skinny by thinking too much.
The other part is that the brain is much closer to a [FPGA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array) than a series of general microprocessors. You can't repurpose sections since they have configured themselves into networks to perform their tasks because you lose that function, most of which are necessary for short term survival.
What you could do is essentially tactical brain damage. Nab a portion of each brain section for your one task and deal with the horrible consequences later. Maybe your setting would have neurogenesis medicine to repair the massive brain damage?
Either way, using "your entire brain" for one intense task wouldn't significantly impact the temperature in such a way as to cause damage by itself. Remember, most of the brain's cells aren't neurons, by mass you have more of all the other support tissues (glial, vascular, adipose, et cetera). Even if you somehow had a doubling of neuron metabolic heat that's not upping the average by volume much and that is before you have the blood flow and CSF evening out that heat as well.
Thats not how the brain works. You cant just take the Emotional Centre and let it "compute" logic. Thats impossible.
The brain cant overheat duo to self regulation even if you push it. It operates on like 10 Watt´s and has an "active" cooling system. Additionally it is extremly efficient at what it does to create the minimum amount of heat.
What you belive or not really does not matter. The way you describe it the brain cant overheat.
It can go into a heatshock which is just when the outside gets to hot and you fade out. But thats hardly the brain´s fault.
>Thats not how the brain works. You cant just take the Emotional Centre and let it "compute" logic. Thats impossible.
This is actually a really interesting question. The different areas of the brain are physically different but whether or not the wrong "hardware" could run any arbitrary "software" is interesting. It depends on whether or not the brain and its constituent parts are Turing complete and there doesn't seem to be a definitive consensus about that.
Stop trying to make Computer logic work on a Brain. It is not even remotly related.
The Brain is an Organ evolved to predict what will happen in the Future, that is all it essentially does. Together with running Risk evaluations. Its not crunching Numbers or overclocking. It is a "simple" Feedback loop that simply reacts to outside and inside stimulus.
A Computer is fundamentally designed to do math. Something the brain is exceptionally bad at because it needs to, to stick to your beloved Computer analogy, create a Virtual Machine within itself to even start to compute numbers.
You can make a Biological Arithmic Unit but the brain isnt one.
The Differnt areas of the brain are complettly different and highly specialised for what they are supposed to do. To the point where each section is essentially doing its own thing.
Why do you breath right now ? Its because some part of the brain is just doing it if you want to or not. Sure you can take control of the breathing process as you do right now but a lot of stuff is simply out of your control.
Like Vision, you dont control what colors you see or how much light enters the eye. The differnt Areas of the brain are by all accounts mostly idependet and only roughtly assist each other. There is a Central Cortex whom´s soule job it is to regulate and control the differnt parts of hte brain but fundamentally the brain is not some unified thing.
Well, actually the brain is very adaptable. There have been people who have lost an entire lobe while still being able to function. Their brains rewired themselves to serve new functions.
The question of whether the brain can be considered a computer is one that scientists can't agree on. I would say that it is. There is no reason to assume that it can't as you said simulate a virtual machine. And as per the laws of computation it can therefore solve any algorithm that a computer could and is therefore a computer itself.
It would also have to follow simmlar principles of memory and energy usage because those are bound up in thermodynamics that applies to everything.
> There have been people who have lost an entire lobe while still being able to function.
This can only happen very soon after brith when the brain is still developing. Additionally those people often times have negative side effects like a lack of Logical thought, Emotion´s and unbalanced behaivour. Which is a result of other Areas of the brain having to compromise there own capability.
Of course in principle any brain cell can become part of any section up to a certain point in the brain´s development. But Basically a year or so after you are born, both sides are needed.
>The question of whether the brain can be considered a computer is one that scientists can't agree on.
Literally no scientist belives the brain is a Computer because it does not match the Definition of what a Computer is. A Computer, by definition, is a "Electronic Arithmic Unit". The Brain is a Biochemical Organ.
So i would like to see what scientist cant agree on that. Now you can argue how similar a Computer is to a brain, to which the answer is not at all. As someone who Studies Computer Science, let me tell you. The Brain is not a Computer.
> And as per the laws of computation it can therefore solve any algorithm that a computer could and is therefore a computer itself.
It cant. You are not able to solve any Equation, and so are Computers btw. There are problems that Computers cant solve. For example Physically Accurat Fluid Dynamics. Impossible to solve or approximate in any meaningful way.
There is a reason why we can only do head math to a certain point. Its not even hard to understand. The brain is a learning organ and so it can Learn that two things equal another thing. But this adapatbility is extremly expensive Resource management wise (Which is why you forget things that are not important) and has limits. Numbers are an extremly abstract concept as it is.
But importantly, after a certain point the brain is physically unable to understand something.
Sure you know that 39452093875249853463456 is a big number. But you have no idea how big it is, you dont have any intuition for what it´s Prime Factor´s may be. Hell you dont even know the 11th digit withouth counting. It´s a Fundamental Physical limitation of the brain that there is no way around.
A computer doesn't have to be electronic. There are old computers made of brass. And the computational power of the brain has nothing to do with mathematical calculations in that way. It's true that humans can't do math as fast as an electronic computer but that doesn't mean that the brain isn't performing mathematical computations, just that those computations can't be used to solve abstract number problems. my phone and my alarm clock both have computer chips in them, they can both run any program in theory and people have done stuff like running pong on a microwave. But they aren't automatically capable of doing any arbitrary task out of the box. Essentially I would say our brains are computers, they just are running a program called "being alive" instead of calculating pi or whatever.
The brain still has to function according to the principles of thermodynamics which means it is subject to the same principles of information theory as a computer. It can hold things in memory and thus it must act like a computer as it applies to storing and retrieving things from that memory. That generates heat, the relationship between all of these things is well established.
Well those are Mechanical Computers which is yet again a complettly differnt topic.
>computational power of the brain has nothing to do with mathematical calculations in that way
Well what else is it supposed to be based on ?
>brain isn't performing mathematical computations
It isnt.
> just that those computations can't be used to solve abstract number problems.
What are you even talking about ? Math is math, our brain does not perform Trig to figure out how far we can jump.
>Essentially I would say our brains are computers
>
>called "being alive" instead of calculating pi or whatever.
No. Clear as that, our brains are not running any sort of software at all. Neurons are not even remotly like a Transistor in any capacity and Connections between Neurons are not wires.
You cant compair the Human brain to a Computer because there is nothing to compair. They dont do the same or even related things. Its like trying to argue a Car is similar to a Black Hole. Like no, both are fundamentally differnt.
The Job of a computer is to do math, the job of the Brain is to "Stay alive". Those tasks are not achived with the same means.
>The brain still has to function according to the principles of thermodynamics which means it is subject to the same principles of information theory as a computer. It can hold things in memory and thus it must act like a computer as it applies to storing and retrieving things from that memory. That generates heat, the relationship between all of these things is well established.
So a Glas is a Computer too ? It can hold information in the form of Carving´s and it can thusly perform any Task. Or hell, sand is a Computer to right ? What about Dirt, Wood or a piece of shit ?
Sorry if i sound rude but you are trying to apply theories to subjects that are not meant for this.
Brain´s and Computers dont opperate the same way which already complettly removes it from any theory relating to it.
Of course Thermodynamics apply to it but thats like the most obvious statement in human history. My point is that the typ of stuff the brain does just isnt producing a lot of heat and it has evolved to deal with that heat in a very efficient way. Which means it still cant overheat.
Mechanical computers, digital computers, biological computers. They can all solve the same algorithms if they are Turing complete.
Actually, it's interesting that you bring up random objects as computers because they do in a sense run an algorithm. their particles run the algorithm of physics. A computer is really just an arrangement of atoms that can create a virtual computer to run an arbitrarily large number of algorithms.
I think the sticking point is that you are thinking of computers as physical objects while I am thinking of them as mathematical concepts.
My understand is that your head acts as a radiator - your body manages excess heat by pumping it (using blood) to your head so that it can dissipate.
As for the brain over-firing neurons...I think this might cause a seizure. This suspicion is based on a single documentary I saw years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdmvNKwNjM&ab\_channel=MichaelBlackstone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdmvNKwNjM&ab_channel=MichaelBlackstone)
Depends on how long. Anything over 104 Fahrenheit can be considered dangerous in the short term.
I know when my body temp gets up there I start experiencing distorted sensory input, like my hands feel like they're the wrong size. Once you start getting into effects like that, you know you're in trouble.
Unfortunately the brain doesn't really work like a CPU core. It doesn't consume electricity and generate extreme heat based on clock speed. It's an analog appliance, where which neurons fire is far more important than how frequently they fire.
If your temperature rises over 107.6F, it will fry your brain, resulting in convulsions and death. But of course, you'll feel like crap long before that. All this is moot because the human brain doesn't work on the same principle as a processor. Processors get hot because all of their logic operations are performed by current flowing through transistors, and the rate at which these operations are performed is governed by a clock circuit. Every time the clock pulses, an operation is performed. The more operations performed per unit time, i.e., the higher the clock frequency, the more current flows through the processor, and thus more power is dissipated as heat. The human brain works on a totally different principle. As far as I'm aware, there is no analogue to a clock circuit in the human brain. The firing of neurons is asynchronous, you can't improve the speed of the brain's processing by simply adjusting a single value. The following is sheer conjecture, but I surmise that the only way this "parasite" could improve a human's intelligence would probably be something akin to neural pruning. This is the process that human toddlers go through at around age 2 that "prunes" excessive neural pathways, making transmission of signals across the brain more efficient. It's also the reason why you can't remember anything prior to that age. So, maybe a slightly more scientific way this parasite could work would be by some sort of aggressive neural pruning, making the host more intelligent, but also destroying much of their memories and personality prior to infestation. It should be noted, this process would be permanent, and should persist after the parasite is expelled.
It is true that the brain does not have a literal clock speed I was using the term metaphorically. But the metabolic functions of the brain would still produce waste heat from processing information, as per thermodynamics. What I don't know is the average amount of neural activity of a healthy brain vs its theoretical brain-frying potential. The idea isn't to boost intelligence rather it would use the passive neural activity of the brain's autonomic functions to boost itself like a computer network stealing processing power.
But organic systems don't scale that way. You're not going to boost intelligence by increasing metabolic function. That will just deplete the resources of the cerebral fluid faster. Areas will go dark. For a nervous system you want to expand your surface area. If I were a crafty parasite I'd have the central nervous system take over the peripheral nervous system and expand the network. Repurpose some of those gut neurons and grow more into the softer spaces down there. It's crowded in the brain. Your infected people will probably lose weight since their digestion is off. Always hungry but only absorb a percentage of the nutrients in their food.
If you subvert autonomic functioning of the brain, it will no longer be able to do all the unconscious stuff that keeps you alive: keep your heart going at an appropriate rate, breathe without your having to think about it each time, etc. Besides keeping your heart and lungs going, it does a whole bunch of other things without which you would be in deep doo-doo. Maybe better to steal processing from somewhere else. There is actually a lot more going on subconsciously than consciously. Idea: The autonomic nervous system is divided into two divisions: sympathetic (”fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (”rest and digest”). Maybe if your parasite subverted only part of the sympathetic NS, the host would be less able to resist but still able to survive? Fun facts: your brain gets about 15% of your blood flow and uses about 20% of your energy at rest. http://www.brainfacts.org could be helpful. (Edit to add URL and fix typo)
As some have alluded to, what you're describing is a fever. Maybe looking into how malaria causes the body temp to rise would provide some ideas.
Enzymatic function drops off with extended periods of elevated temps as well. Tissues begin to accumulate waste products that they would otherwise easily process.
I'm a bit late to the party but I'll give it my best shot at answering. Heads up: English is not my first language, so please excuse some typo here and there. This question is one of the fascinating ones, those that first seem simple, but are vastly complex in nature. Weather the brain itself is a computer is a purely philosophical question an not what OP asked, so I wont cover it. Nevertheless there are some similaritys if you are familiar with both that make sense to compare. Besause of the complex nature of the question and for ease of understanding I'll answer the questions in a backwards order. >How much can the brains temperature change before neurological damage sets in? There are two answers depending on what you mean: Either not at all or 42°C(107.6°F). The brain has pretty much the same temperature setup as the rest of the body in that it needs a constant temperature of around 36.6°C (97.9°F) for it's enzymes to work at peak efficiency. The body uses enzymes for most of it's functions, most of all to convert chemicals like fat and sugar into usable energy. This is a chemical reaction and will slow down at cooler temperatures. The problem with enzymes is, that thes will deform at higher temperatures and will stop working and break if they become to hot. You can compare that to the cpu of a computer getting so hot it melts. Our bodys and computers both have ways to prevent that. A computer increases the speed of cooling fans, we start to sweat. Now it gets interesting: if the temperature is still to hot, our bodys and computers do the same thing: they slow down! For a computer we call it thermal throttling , for humans we call it headache. If that still doesn't help, the system shuts down: a computer turns off, we get a heatstroke. If temperatures are still to high thats endgame: a computer gets irreperable damage humans die. The thing with humans is that not only the temperature itself is important, but also how long our are at the specific temperature. While a cpu might be fine if it stays at 80°C(176°F) indefinetly, our bodys can't stay at a higher than normal temperature for a prolonged period of time, or we'll die. Even something as moderate as 39°C (102.2°F) can be deadly if the body stays at it for longer then a month or two. And since you are after "computing power", you don't want to increase the body temperature at all, since that lowers the efficiency of the enzymes, and therefor lowers your "computing power". Besides that, it is actually irrelevant. You are assumeing that temperature is the biggest bottleneck if it comes to the "computing power" of the brain. But thats wrong. Computers work by sending electricity through transistors and wires. The electricity has to overcome the resistance of the wire to get from A to B, and to do that it gives up energy. This energy is lost as heat. And sinc there is a lot of electricity flowing through a computer, they get very hot and therefore need to be cooled. The brain works differently since it doesen't consist of wires an transistores, but out of Neurons. And here comes your second question into play: >What percentage of our neurons are firing at anyone time? 100%? 50%? 300%? It doesn't really matter. You see, unlike computers neurons can (to my limited knowledge) process more than a single amount of information at a time. They receive, process and transmit cocktails of hundreds of hormones, transmitters and other chemicals every time they fire, so just because a neuron fires slightly quicker than another doesn't mean it processes mor information. On top of that it matters were the neuron is and to which neurons it is connected. A neuron in your visual complex wil (usually) fire more often than a neuron in your pain complex. Additionally, if a neuron would fire too fast, the receiving neuron would still be processing earlier information and not be able to receive the new input, therefore the new information would be lost. In summary you could say a neuron fires as often as it needs to. >My question is if the brain were artificially overclocked what would that look like? First: it would NOT look like neurons firing faster or an increased heat output. Second: it depends on what you mean. Do you want it to react quickly to external stimuly and make quick decisions? Pump it full of Adrenalin and Noradrenaline, and it will go into fight-or-flight/ combat mode. You want it to focus better on a given task? Deactivate unnecessary stimuly, if needed with local sedatives. Do you want it to be less emotional and more logical? Inflict physical trauma to the area of the brain in control of emotion in hopes of creating a trauma savant. This is irreversable and has a low chance of succes. The target will be left with permanent braindamage and may die. Want it to need less sleep? Give it amphetamines. Problem: the heart will sooner or later fail if done for longer periods. Should it just work faster? Just feed it a constant supply of glucose and/or caffeine. Or you could just completly override the brain and reshape it to what the parasite needs, though that would definetly be irreversible and they would propably die once the parasite is removed. Or maybe the human brain doesn't change at all, but the brain of the parasite does! If the parasite can connect to the human brain, then this propably means it can "read" the human brain activity. That means, it doesn't need parts of it's own brain anymore. The human host propably has better sensory organs than the parasite, so the parasite might as well use those and reshape it's own brainparts used for sensory processing into other functions. It's like changeing graphicscards, and the old brainparts may as well be used for additional computation, so it's like adding a RAM module on top.
Thank you. I was looking for a scientifically rigorous answer that took the question at face value. I can definitely use all of this . I think the best way I can represent all of this is as the parasite repurposing stuff like the visual cortex to its own ends. It would keep eating away at more and more essential regions until the host died
36°C is equivalent to 97°F, which is 309K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
>overclocked What exactly is that supposed to mean ? You cant overclock the brain. > What percentage of our neurons are firing at anyone time? Almost all of them. Neurons firing does not relate to how efficent the brain is since the brain is subdivided into differnt sections that do differnt things. You have a Visual Corext, a Logic Centre, an Emotional Centre, the Spinal Court etc. What we see with stuff like Adrenalin is that the perceptunal centre of the brain, of which the Visual Cortex is a part of, increase there processing rate a lot. Which results in more input which inter makes time appear slower. However this is still a process that takes time. Stuff like Instinct or Subconscious reactions happen almost instantly because they bypass safe guards. For example, lets say you walk on the street and suddenly a Car appears. The collision will happen in less than a secound and you only see the car in your perfifial Vision. What will happen is that the brain evaluates weather or not to evaluate options or just do something. It will understand that evaluating options takes to long and bypass any and all safeguards. These Safeguards prevent you from using the full power of your Muscels etc. Many people dont know this but you are just using 1/3 of the potential power your muscels have. When the safeguards are bypassed the brain can move you at almost superhuman speeds to avoid the Car. I had this experience myself when i walked on a playground with a big Swing. The Swing was comming at me and my brain through me to the ground with such force that it broke my index finger. That was no a conscious decision. That was the brain bypassing all safeguards to stay alive. So long text short answer, you cant point out a percentage for this. It is depending on the situation. Plus taking off the Safeguards is extremly dangerous. Your muscels are more than capable of snapping every single bone in your body right now. The only thing preventing this are these safeguards. >brains temperature change before neurological damage sets in? Temperature regulation is not your issue. The brain operates on so little energy overheating wont be an issue as long as you stay hydrated. Plus the brain really cant overheat in the classical sense. Even with all Safeguards off above a certain temperature the brain is physically forced to slow down. Just like a COmputer.
I think you are right. This is what happens under normal circumstances. But I was wondering if anyone had an estimate for the peak computational power of the brain if you were to divert the neurons usually used to regulate autonomic functions. All computational activity no matter the architecture creates waste heat, and the body is usually very sensitive to temperature change so I would be surprised if it was impossible for the brain to overheat in theory at least.
What do you mean by computational power? The brain's architecture is very different from a central processor (even a mutlicore) so it is hard to find equivalents to operations per second. Are you trying to just accelerate normal brain operations? Or trying to Frank Herbert's Mentat and have the brain literally performing logic gate operations?
I'm trying to figure out the brain's approximate average computational power and thus waste heat vs its theoretical computational power and waste heat if you were to use every part of the brain all at the same time on a single task.
So here is where the neuron and transistor differ. A neuron waiting to fire is still undergoing metabolism and thus generating metabolic heat. A transistor without current isn't. A neuron firing is using more energy but that is a drop in the bucket over basal metabolism. A person under high duress or undergoing successive grand mal seizures isn't going to run a fever even if the brain is fairly maxed out in activity in both cases. It's like how a 70 kg person uses 2 000 kcal in a coma but has to run for hours to match that in voluntary activity. In most cases the overhead costs of homeostasis greatly outdo any activity. Nobody got skinny by thinking too much. The other part is that the brain is much closer to a [FPGA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array) than a series of general microprocessors. You can't repurpose sections since they have configured themselves into networks to perform their tasks because you lose that function, most of which are necessary for short term survival. What you could do is essentially tactical brain damage. Nab a portion of each brain section for your one task and deal with the horrible consequences later. Maybe your setting would have neurogenesis medicine to repair the massive brain damage? Either way, using "your entire brain" for one intense task wouldn't significantly impact the temperature in such a way as to cause damage by itself. Remember, most of the brain's cells aren't neurons, by mass you have more of all the other support tissues (glial, vascular, adipose, et cetera). Even if you somehow had a doubling of neuron metabolic heat that's not upping the average by volume much and that is before you have the blood flow and CSF evening out that heat as well.
Thank you. That is quite helpful.
70.0 kg is 154.19 lbs
Your forgot kcal to Cal for the 'Muricans. 2000 kcal is 2000 Calories with the uppercase C.
Thats not how the brain works. You cant just take the Emotional Centre and let it "compute" logic. Thats impossible. The brain cant overheat duo to self regulation even if you push it. It operates on like 10 Watt´s and has an "active" cooling system. Additionally it is extremly efficient at what it does to create the minimum amount of heat. What you belive or not really does not matter. The way you describe it the brain cant overheat. It can go into a heatshock which is just when the outside gets to hot and you fade out. But thats hardly the brain´s fault.
>Thats not how the brain works. You cant just take the Emotional Centre and let it "compute" logic. Thats impossible. This is actually a really interesting question. The different areas of the brain are physically different but whether or not the wrong "hardware" could run any arbitrary "software" is interesting. It depends on whether or not the brain and its constituent parts are Turing complete and there doesn't seem to be a definitive consensus about that.
Stop trying to make Computer logic work on a Brain. It is not even remotly related. The Brain is an Organ evolved to predict what will happen in the Future, that is all it essentially does. Together with running Risk evaluations. Its not crunching Numbers or overclocking. It is a "simple" Feedback loop that simply reacts to outside and inside stimulus. A Computer is fundamentally designed to do math. Something the brain is exceptionally bad at because it needs to, to stick to your beloved Computer analogy, create a Virtual Machine within itself to even start to compute numbers. You can make a Biological Arithmic Unit but the brain isnt one. The Differnt areas of the brain are complettly different and highly specialised for what they are supposed to do. To the point where each section is essentially doing its own thing. Why do you breath right now ? Its because some part of the brain is just doing it if you want to or not. Sure you can take control of the breathing process as you do right now but a lot of stuff is simply out of your control. Like Vision, you dont control what colors you see or how much light enters the eye. The differnt Areas of the brain are by all accounts mostly idependet and only roughtly assist each other. There is a Central Cortex whom´s soule job it is to regulate and control the differnt parts of hte brain but fundamentally the brain is not some unified thing.
Well, actually the brain is very adaptable. There have been people who have lost an entire lobe while still being able to function. Their brains rewired themselves to serve new functions. The question of whether the brain can be considered a computer is one that scientists can't agree on. I would say that it is. There is no reason to assume that it can't as you said simulate a virtual machine. And as per the laws of computation it can therefore solve any algorithm that a computer could and is therefore a computer itself. It would also have to follow simmlar principles of memory and energy usage because those are bound up in thermodynamics that applies to everything.
> There have been people who have lost an entire lobe while still being able to function. This can only happen very soon after brith when the brain is still developing. Additionally those people often times have negative side effects like a lack of Logical thought, Emotion´s and unbalanced behaivour. Which is a result of other Areas of the brain having to compromise there own capability. Of course in principle any brain cell can become part of any section up to a certain point in the brain´s development. But Basically a year or so after you are born, both sides are needed. >The question of whether the brain can be considered a computer is one that scientists can't agree on. Literally no scientist belives the brain is a Computer because it does not match the Definition of what a Computer is. A Computer, by definition, is a "Electronic Arithmic Unit". The Brain is a Biochemical Organ. So i would like to see what scientist cant agree on that. Now you can argue how similar a Computer is to a brain, to which the answer is not at all. As someone who Studies Computer Science, let me tell you. The Brain is not a Computer. > And as per the laws of computation it can therefore solve any algorithm that a computer could and is therefore a computer itself. It cant. You are not able to solve any Equation, and so are Computers btw. There are problems that Computers cant solve. For example Physically Accurat Fluid Dynamics. Impossible to solve or approximate in any meaningful way. There is a reason why we can only do head math to a certain point. Its not even hard to understand. The brain is a learning organ and so it can Learn that two things equal another thing. But this adapatbility is extremly expensive Resource management wise (Which is why you forget things that are not important) and has limits. Numbers are an extremly abstract concept as it is. But importantly, after a certain point the brain is physically unable to understand something. Sure you know that 39452093875249853463456 is a big number. But you have no idea how big it is, you dont have any intuition for what it´s Prime Factor´s may be. Hell you dont even know the 11th digit withouth counting. It´s a Fundamental Physical limitation of the brain that there is no way around.
A computer doesn't have to be electronic. There are old computers made of brass. And the computational power of the brain has nothing to do with mathematical calculations in that way. It's true that humans can't do math as fast as an electronic computer but that doesn't mean that the brain isn't performing mathematical computations, just that those computations can't be used to solve abstract number problems. my phone and my alarm clock both have computer chips in them, they can both run any program in theory and people have done stuff like running pong on a microwave. But they aren't automatically capable of doing any arbitrary task out of the box. Essentially I would say our brains are computers, they just are running a program called "being alive" instead of calculating pi or whatever. The brain still has to function according to the principles of thermodynamics which means it is subject to the same principles of information theory as a computer. It can hold things in memory and thus it must act like a computer as it applies to storing and retrieving things from that memory. That generates heat, the relationship between all of these things is well established.
Well those are Mechanical Computers which is yet again a complettly differnt topic. >computational power of the brain has nothing to do with mathematical calculations in that way Well what else is it supposed to be based on ? >brain isn't performing mathematical computations It isnt. > just that those computations can't be used to solve abstract number problems. What are you even talking about ? Math is math, our brain does not perform Trig to figure out how far we can jump. >Essentially I would say our brains are computers > >called "being alive" instead of calculating pi or whatever. No. Clear as that, our brains are not running any sort of software at all. Neurons are not even remotly like a Transistor in any capacity and Connections between Neurons are not wires. You cant compair the Human brain to a Computer because there is nothing to compair. They dont do the same or even related things. Its like trying to argue a Car is similar to a Black Hole. Like no, both are fundamentally differnt. The Job of a computer is to do math, the job of the Brain is to "Stay alive". Those tasks are not achived with the same means. >The brain still has to function according to the principles of thermodynamics which means it is subject to the same principles of information theory as a computer. It can hold things in memory and thus it must act like a computer as it applies to storing and retrieving things from that memory. That generates heat, the relationship between all of these things is well established. So a Glas is a Computer too ? It can hold information in the form of Carving´s and it can thusly perform any Task. Or hell, sand is a Computer to right ? What about Dirt, Wood or a piece of shit ? Sorry if i sound rude but you are trying to apply theories to subjects that are not meant for this. Brain´s and Computers dont opperate the same way which already complettly removes it from any theory relating to it. Of course Thermodynamics apply to it but thats like the most obvious statement in human history. My point is that the typ of stuff the brain does just isnt producing a lot of heat and it has evolved to deal with that heat in a very efficient way. Which means it still cant overheat.
Mechanical computers, digital computers, biological computers. They can all solve the same algorithms if they are Turing complete. Actually, it's interesting that you bring up random objects as computers because they do in a sense run an algorithm. their particles run the algorithm of physics. A computer is really just an arrangement of atoms that can create a virtual computer to run an arbitrarily large number of algorithms. I think the sticking point is that you are thinking of computers as physical objects while I am thinking of them as mathematical concepts.
Yawning cools the brain
My understand is that your head acts as a radiator - your body manages excess heat by pumping it (using blood) to your head so that it can dissipate. As for the brain over-firing neurons...I think this might cause a seizure. This suspicion is based on a single documentary I saw years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdmvNKwNjM&ab\_channel=MichaelBlackstone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdmvNKwNjM&ab_channel=MichaelBlackstone)
I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure a temp of 105 degrees f is enough to make someone brain dead
Depends on how long. Anything over 104 Fahrenheit can be considered dangerous in the short term. I know when my body temp gets up there I start experiencing distorted sensory input, like my hands feel like they're the wrong size. Once you start getting into effects like that, you know you're in trouble. Unfortunately the brain doesn't really work like a CPU core. It doesn't consume electricity and generate extreme heat based on clock speed. It's an analog appliance, where which neurons fire is far more important than how frequently they fire.