Question

The nervous system is efficient to encode virtually unlimited information with limited resources. What is the evidence supporting this idea? (300-500 words)

Answer 1

The Nervous system is a complex collection of nerves and specialized cells called neurons which transmit signals between different parts of the body. The nervous system promote energy efficiency. Energy consumption in single neurons depends on the types and the number of ion-channels. It also interacts with other system in body. Nervous system to control the creation of specific hormones and enzymes.

The nervous system is efficient to encode virtually unlimoted information with limited resources. In the nervous system, limited bandwidth and dynamic range create an information bottleneck due to the limited response ranges of the neurons in sensory epithelia. Sensory receptors are required to compress an enormous range of statistically sensory data into their limited range. The application of information theory to the nervous system is formally pleasing and has provided some compelling insights.

In the nervous system, neurons contain fluctuations in biophysical states limit the information they can encode with almost 20-60% of total energy alloted for the brain used for signalling purposes such as action potential or by transmission of synapsis. The efficiency of information processing in the nervous system and how the complexity of information processing and metabolic energy consumption act as constraints. Neuroscience is also a neuronal computation.Any transformation of information can be regarded as computation, while the transfer of information from a source to receiver is communication. The information theory allowed optimisation of complicated devices like satellite communication systems. This information theory to study the efficiency of processing in the nervous system.

A widely used information theoretic metric in neuroscience is the mutual information, which measures how much a random variable tells aboutvanother random variable. The mutual information is zero when the neuronal representation is statistically independent of the stimulus.

In the brain, volume changes are not the primary mode of conveying information. Instead the compartments present in the brain, ranging from synaptic clefts to organelles, maintain constant volume over several seconds. Which leads changes in the short time scale are the numbers of molecules, such as transmitters or ions in these compartments. If molecules are charged, chemical potential sets up an electrical potential, which is the basis for much of the signalling within the brain. For some molecules, such as Na+ and K+ ions, the concentration changes during electrical signalling are relative to the total concentrations of these molecules. Then easily compute the energetic cost of neuronal signals.

The free energy principle tells that an organism should strive to reduce its prediction error thereby reducing the free energy. To minimise free energy, the expected prediction error has to be minimised while, at the same time, the entropy of the conditional density is maximised.which means the purpose of free-energy minimisation is to reduce sensory entropy.

The digital nervous system (DNS) is analogous to a biological nervous system, on the flow of management of digital information across the project lifecycle.It is a digital infrastructure that provides a well-integrated flow of digital information to the right part of the organization at the right time.