donham@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Christopher Donham) (11/16/90)
One of the questions that often comes up when discussing electronic
implementations of neural networks is the type of biological system that
contains a given number of neurons. The usefullness of such a comparison
is highly questionable due to the very different nature of the systems.
None-the-less I would be interested in obtaining information about
the number of neurons in various organisms/animals. Specifically, I
would like to find a source that will fill in the following chart:
Number of neurons* | Organism
--------------------------------------------------
~1 |
~10 |
~100 |
~1000 |
~10^4 |
~10^5 |
~10^6 |
~10^7 |
~10^8 |
~10^9 |
~10^10 | Man.
*extremely approximate, obviously
I would be most interested in a source I can quote (book, journal
article, etc), though if you know any of the numbers, I would still
like to hear from you even if you cannot give an "authoritative"
source. I have checked several neuroanatomy and comparative
neuroanatomy texts, as well as a couple of physiological psychology
texts, and was very surprised that I could not find the above
information (the texts described lots of creatures, but would not give
estimates of the total number of neurons).
I do not normally read this group, so please send all replies to
me directly. Please, no messages telling me how silly/wrong it is to
compare the electronic and biological systems in this manner. I know
that the electronic system is very different then the biological system.
Thanks for any information.
Chris
Christopher Donham University of Pennsylvania donham@axon.ee.upenn.edu
Department of EE 200 South 33rd. St.
VLSI Grad. Stud. Philadelphia, PA 19104 (215) 898-7116
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