MY BRAIN: THE CPU

When the CPU in your computer is too slow, it is time to get a new computer. However, the CPU in your brain is not so easy to speed up. It has always intrigued me as to whether the storage drive in our brain ever gets filled up, does it then compress info, or do we die of old age with brain cells never used or filled. If they do get filled, like a drive, what decides what info should be dumped for new info.

Researchers at Columbia University are combining the processing power of the human brain with computer vision to develop a novel device that will allow people to search through images ten times faster than they can on their own. It's a start, but meanwhile back at the ranch, it does not answer my questions about my current, unassisted brain.

Japanese scientists have unveiled a device that can pluck images out of your brain and recreate them on a computer screen.

Using an fMRI brain scanner, researchers read electrical signals coming from people's brains while they thought about letters in the word "neuron." The research team led by Yukiyaso Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Labs has designed software that can process the output of the fMRI and search for signals associated with vision. (Many of the same parts of the brain that process images in the real world are also used to create images in your mind's eye.)

The brain works somewhat like both a computer and a chemical factory. Brain cells produce electrical signals and send them from cell to cell along pathways called circuits. As in a computer, these circuits receive, process, store, and retrieve information. Unlike a computer, however, the brain creates its electrical signals by chemical means. The proper functioning of the brain depends on many complicated chemical substances produced by brain cells.

While it might not happen in my lifetime, I'd certainly love to find a way to answer my questions about brain functioning, the care and feeding of, and how and when to tune it up.