What is the speed of thought?

Question

physics

Answer 1

There shouldn't really be a speed of thought as a thought starts in ur brain, doesn't go anywhere then stops in the brain,in the same place.......

Answer 2

One way of gauging the capability of a human brain is to compare what it would take to produce a computer that can duplicate human performance. Since we know the exact specifications of a computer, we can then make a loose extrapolation of human performance. Of course, no computer in existence can do exactly what human brains can do, but that doesn't mean trends can't be observed and good guess can't be made. One such study (link 1) which concludes that the human brain seems to operate at what would be about 100 million MIPS (million instructions per second) and probably has about 100 million megabytes of working memory.

Of course, if you're just asking what the speed of transmission of a signal along a nerve cell is, that's an entirely different answer. The key words to find lots of information on the web are 'action potential speed of propogation'. In lay terms, a signal moves anywhere from 10 to 100 meters per second (that's roughly 200 mph at top speed) with differences depending on the type of nerve cell and the like. Fairly fast as far as natural things go, but nowhere near the ridiculous speeds it is reputed to proceed at. Your brain, of course, is tightly packed so it doesn't NEED ridiculous speeds. Good thing!

Answer 3

A few comments:

You need to distinguish between how fast a brain can calcuate, which is what most of the above answers seem to be hinting at and in comparing to computers, versus the "speed" of thought where one means how fast can thoughts be generated.

The action potential, and propogation of impusles is not really of concern because there is no one-to-one relation between a thought a single neuron firing. It like a bit travelling on the system bus on the moththerboard - by itself it doest not have any meaning.

Answer 4

This would depend on the individual brain. People do actually think faster or slower than others, very literally from the scientific standpoint.
This is because the action of "thinking" involves electrical synapses across neurons, and depending on the condition of your brain this could be faster or slower. Some people have diseases which cause demyelination, and neurons which are demyelinated do not send signals as quickly.

Answer 5

well the actual speed of thought would be the same as the actual speed of neural transmissions i would assume... for example a visual neural transmission ranges b/t 10ms-240ms depending on the complexity of the visual input so i would think that a thought would be even faster since it doesn't require an actual input or an output, even, for a person to have a "thought"...

Answer 6

The average human brain can make about 200 calculations per second.

Answer 7

2.4 mph according to me, a stop watch, and a math problem standing approximately 2 meters away.

Answer 8

Light envies it.