Are there really more synapses than atoms in the universe?

Subject: Are there really more synapses than atoms in the universe?

Date: Fri Dec 18 14:26:36 1998
Posted by David Gamon
Grade level: nonaligned
School: Allen Bragdon Publishers
City: San Francisco State/Province: CA
Country: USA
Area of science: Neuroscience
ID: 914012796.Ns

Message:


I have read many times (in Ornstein's *Right Mind*, Buzan's *Use 
Both Sides of Your Brain* [citing Moscow U's Pyotr Anokhin], 
e.g.) that "there are more potential connections between the 
billion or so neurons in the human brain than there are atoms in 
the universe" (Ornstein p. 95). How can this be true? Doesn't 
each "potential connection" correspond to more than one atom?

Re: Are there really more synapses than atoms in the universe?

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