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Compared to a human brain with its 86 billion nerve cells, a bee’s brain may have only about a million. But each one of these cells has a finely branched struct
by stickfigure 3y ago
Compared to a human brain with its 86 billion nerve cells, a bee’s brain may have only about a million. But each one of these cells has a finely branched structure that in complexity may resemble a full-grown oak tree. Each nerve cell can make connections with 10,000 other ones—hence there may be more than a billion such connection points in a bee brain—and each of these connections is at least potentially plastic, alterable by individual experience.
I remember from Robert Sapolsky's lectures that human neurons also take input from 10,000 (on average) other neurons. So bees are the same. But it feels like this paragraph is trying to convince me that the branching structure of bees is somehow more elaborate than the human equivalent.
Still reading, but I feel I can no longer trust the narrator.
- dilawar 3y agoPurkinje neurons are found in mammals as well. Huge branches and a lots of input. This paragraph is odd. This elaborate structures of neurons is a big reason why many neuroscientist don't like point neurons artitecture. Personally I don't think this structure can be approximated by a later or point neurons -- at least not without a significant cost. After reading "More Is Different" I am more open to the idea that substrate matter quite a lot.
- lanamo 3y agohere is a lecture (on Zoom) from Prof. Chittka about the very same topic as the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSaqi2ysDoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSaqi2ysDoA
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aranchelk 3y agoSame, that’s where they lost me. Intentionally misleading, and quite obviously so to anyone who’s read on the subject. I believe the generally held view is the intelligence displayed by ants and bees is emergent — not resident in any individual. Most likely being a bee doesn’t feel like anything at all. Not a great way to start a pretty challenging argument.
- AndrewOMartin 3y agoI forget exactly where, but one analogy I read was that an insect's brain is less like a CPU with various dedicated areas for different general forms of processing, and more like a Swiss watch, which uses extraordinary precision to get a few very elegant specialised functions out of relatively small components.