The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

Abstract

This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at ∼10⁹ bits/s. The stark contrast between these numbers remains unexplained and touches on fundamental aspects of brain function: what neural substrate sets this speed limit on the pace of our existence? Why does the brain need billions of neurons to process 10 bits/s? Why can we only think about one thing at a time? The brain seems to operate in two distinct modes: the "outer" brain handles fast high-dimensional sensory and motor signals, whereas the "inner" brain processes the reduced few bits needed to control behavior. Plausible explanations exist for the large neuron numbers in the outer brain, but not for the inner brain, and we propose new research directions to remedy this.