Cerebrum ut Supermachina: How Neuromorphology Tempers Technomania

Abstract

an important modern challenge of scientific and technological progress is the formation in the public consciousness of the belief in a certain imperfection of biological beings in comparison with products of the technological sphere, in particular, with samples of computing hardware combined with algorithmic models of intelligence. In students of biomedical specialties, such biases can contribute to the utilitarianization of the human phenomenon with corresponding consequences for conscientiousness in working with patients. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate at the modern empirical level the exceptional complexity of the structure of the human brain and the scale of the engineering and technological gap between it and the avant-garde of man-made computing hardware. Using the method of searching and summarizing scientific information, we selected data on the main digital characteristics of the human brain and the two largest human neurons — Betz cells and spinal α-motoneurons. As a result, we present data on the number of neurons, gliocytes and endothelial cells in the human brain, the number, total length and surface area of its capillaries, the length of all its nerve fibers, the total number of its synapses, the dynamics of the formation of neurons and synapses during its intrauterine development, as well as data on the possible information capacity and computational speed of the human brain. We compare these and other parameters of the human brain with the parameters of the current record holder in the field of supercomputers, demonstrating a dramatic gap between them in favor of the human brain. We also present the main morphometric characteristics of the two largest cells in the human body — Betz cells and spinal α-motoneurons, demonstrating the unique ability of living things to have a stable cellular organization even on a macroscopic scale. As a conclusion, the human brain remains fundamentally unachievable to abiotic modeling even from the point of view of current — far incomplete and limited — ideas about its intimate structure and functions.