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From: dominic@debussy.cs.colostate.edu (Zpwdrhoond)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Postulates on the number of neurons
Message-ID: <11689@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Date: 12 Dec 90 21:14:19 GMT
References: <1990Dec11.040646.20760@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU
Organization: Colorado State Computer Science Department
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In article <1990Dec11.040646.20760@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> muttiah@welsh.ecn.purdue.edu (Ranjan S Muttiah) writes:
>
>
>What do researches think about why there are so many _individual_ neurons  
>in the human brain (something like 10^19) ?  Is there some critical number
>needed for "intelligent behaviour" ?

I have seen any estimates quite this high for the number of neurons in the
human brain. Wasserman states that there are approximately 10^11 neurons
comprising something like 10^15 interconnections. More neurons than stars
in the Milky Way I think.

Intelligent behavior is something very elusive to discuss because it
is quite difficult to quantify. Personally, I think the coastal snail
shows quite a bit of intelligence but I'm not sure how many neurons it
is estimated to have. 


dominic@debussy.cs.colostate.edu