0

What is the average number of neurons a signal goes through before reaching the end?

Although it may be naive, it seems that the maximum amount of neurons a visual signal, for example, that passes through before evoking a response could be estimated using the speed of the signal inside the neuron and the response time of a visual stimuli?

Danny Han
  • 143
  • 4
  • 1
    What is the "end"? Should neurons in "parallel" be counted? What about recurrent loops? – Bryan Krause Sep 26 '23 at 13:15
  • Thank you for the response @BryanKrause ! Pardon my ambiguity. I meant to ask how many neurons in the visual cortex a visual input crosses before a person recognizes an object, not counting recurrent loops. I wanted to ask because I wanted to know if things like visual recognition is “deep” (as in going through many successive computations) – Danny Han Sep 27 '23 at 04:48
  • 3
    Hard to say, because you basically ask how many neurons are needed from the retina to the associative cortices including those that make the object come to awareness, especially the latter overlaps with the mystery of what consciousness actually is, let alone how many neurons are needed to make it 'become'. I would say, answer unknown. Up until V1 and the secondary cortices the answer may be kind of straightforward, but even that may become difficult to answer as Bryan indicates. – AliceD Sep 27 '23 at 07:56
  • @AliceD Thank you for your response! Well, what would be the ball part figure for V1 and uptown the secondary cortices? This may be naive thinking, but I was thinking that we could at least estimate the number of neurons a signal passes through by dividing the minimum time it takes for someone to recognize an object with the average time it takes for a signal in the synapse to be sent to the next neuron? – Danny Han Oct 19 '23 at 12:05
  • Possibly, yes; did you do the math? – AliceD Oct 19 '23 at 14:07

0 Answers0