The Speed of Thought
As I studied Einstein's thoughts on relativity, I found myself wondering, "what is the speed of thought?" There are several subtle mentions of this in the book (e.g., 14-40 milliseconds to get from brain to muscles on page 28 of chapter 2), but here's a more definitive paper in which researchers specifically measure pathways in the brain: https://discoverysedge.mayo.edu/2023/03/09/understanding-the-speed-of-brain-communication/ It turns out, the speed of thought (20-"45 milliseconds for a signal to travel from the frontal to parietal regions of the brain"!) is much closer to the speed of sound in air (~1 foot per millisecond) than the speed of light-although rather frighteningly slow! Curiouser and curiouser. Here's there research: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01272-0.
Recent Posts
See AllWe got into a discussion in class today as we discussed Chapter 3, the Great Mystery of Time, about why it is that time seems to move so much faster as we age. This morning, as if attempting to answer
New fossil finds in China suggest that, unlike the commonly held perception that dinosaurs snacked on mammals we discussed in chapter 3, some mammals may have returned the favor and snacked on larger
A new Scientific American article sheds new light on a subject that is particularly important to artists: what parts of our brain are responsible for our imagination. As it turns out, the hippocampus,