How many thoughts can the human brain carry out per second?

Answer 1

Although the question appears to make sense, the questioner has not defined what they mean by 'a thought'. And does s/he mean 'conscious thoughts', 'unconscious thoughts', or both?

Mind you, with our current level of technology, and knowledge about how the brain works, it is in any case more or less impossible to give a definitive answer.

So here's "an" answer, which may or may not be relevant, depending on what the person asking the question had in mind:

For example, about 10Mbits of information are transmitted along each optic nerve PER SECOND. But is transmission speed the same thing as processing speed?

Research reported on the MIT website indicates that under certain circumstances, one measure of processing speed has registered as few as 60 bits per second. And on the other hand, the researcher has made it plain that he was not testing for the maximum processing speed across a variety of tasks. So we cannot assume that his results were representative of brain processing in general.

An estimate on the University of Alberta website suggests that the average "clock speed" of neurons in the brain is a mere 200 firings per second - compare that with the clock speed of even a cheap desktop computer in 2010.

But that's only part of the story, because the brain of an average healthy human being includes around 100 billion neurons, all connected to something like 1000 (or more) other neurons.

100 billion neurons all firing around 200 times per second gives a capacity of 20 million billion firings per second.

Having said that, brain scans show only specific areas of the brain operating at a measurable level of activity at an given time. But does that necessarily mean that the other areas are doing nothing?

What it may show is that the DEGREE of activity is related to the nature of the task, and therefore will be variable throughout the day (and night).

So like I said, the question makes sense. But that doesn't mean we can give a nice neat answer right now.

Answer 2

One it's impossible for the human brain to hold two separate thoughts at the same exact moment.

Answer 3

Thinking is not a discrete thing. The brain is either always working or you are in a coma.