Traffic Jams In Your Brain

An anonymous reader writes "Carl Zimmer's latest foray into neuroscience examines why the brain can get jammed up by a simple math problem: 'Its trillions of connections let it carry out all sorts of sophisticated computations in very little time. You can scan a crowded lobby and pick out a familiar face in a fraction of a second, a task that pushes even today's best computers to their limit. Yet multiplying 357 by 289, a task that demands a puny amount of processing, leaves most of us struggling.' Some scientists think mental tasks can get stuck in bottlenecks because everything has to go through a certain neural network they call 'the router.'"

Router eh?

[MrQuacker]

Have they tried unplugging it, waiting 30 seconds, and plugging it back in?

Re:Router eh?

[fyngyrz]

Yes, hello sir, my name is Rasheed. I understand your router is down. Can you tell me what lights are on on your modem? No Modem? Hmm. Let me call my supervisor.

Re:Pulling it between layers of abstraction.

[h4rm0ny]

The brain arguably is man-made.

I think you'll find there's usually a woman involved in the process too. :)

Re:That was easy!

[RoverDaddy]

Opening a calculator? I remember when calculators were physical things that you could flip upside down so they read '8008135'.

Re:Pulling it between layers of abstraction.

[Anonymous Coward]

Using their GPU for computing?