Is the brain a computer?

The brain is as much a computer as a brick is a palace. The brain is so much more as it is self-aware. It can think for itself. It can think and visualize things that it only imagines. It imagines. A brain can construct a computer. Can a computer construct a brain?

Sure, the brain is a highly sophisticated biological computer. The closest that our computers with a single processor can come is those that use multi - core processing. A 4 core processor (for example) can process data four times faster than a single core. The biggest computers use multiple processors to handle more data per second. Computers like that find a use as Internet servers to name but one use. Even those super computers though come nowhere near to the data processing capability of the brain. I suppose that if there is a "program" then it must be embedded in the genetic makeup of the neurons. Logically, there must be some way in which the data that is recieved by the brain is processed, acted on and controlled and that control must be genetic because it's the genetic pattern in our cells that control the way that they act. That brings us to the whole philosophical question of what is "self" or individual personality and self identity. Of course, the religious will say that the "self" is the immortal soul. A cold assessment might conclude that "self" is nothing more than the collection of personal experiences that accumulate from the moment of birth so that our individuality is nothing more than a structure built up over the years. Of course, the religious would reject such an idea out of hand, but a simple observation of individuals from babys to adulthood might support it. No one would disagree that a baby or young child cannot handle sophisticated concepts that an adult deals with without any difficulty which suggests that "self" and personal identity is something that has be be built up from the experiences of the individual from birth. Shifting my hat to the religious side though, It could be said that the core of "self" is the soul which then forms the foundation of which a new individual is "created" by the same process outlined above. This is a question that can only be settled if at some time in the future it becomes possible for us to build a computer that rivalls the capacity of the brain, and it would be interesting to see the reactions of the religious if, at that level of computing power, the machine developed a self aware "self." Science fiction writers have written about this very thing many times, particularly Isaac Asimov in his robot novels has explored the moral and philosophical questions raised by self aware intelligent machines. And of course, the idea is at the core of the "Terminator" films.

Brain is not a computer, but computer is the brain child of a brain. In other word, it is the human brain that created the computer and the human brain the impart instruction and programming into computer that make it do task and process information and think like a brain. Our brain can learn and grow from experience, education and learning through daily living , while computer does not possess these qualities, it need programming and instruction again to be able to expand / grow.

Maybe both brain and computer are processing system. They both process an input and give an output. But brain can do so much more processing than a computer.

If we look at the similarities of the definitions then it may lead us to a yes. I can still remember the meaning of computer we had to memorize from high school. A computer is a machine which input data, analyses information, make computation, and produce an output. A computer can store and retrieve data which is same like our memory. But there is one difference between the brain and the computer. The computer follows fixed keys and commands... our brain's capacity is never ending. We cannot put a limit to what it can do and how long we can use it. It's strange that we can say the brain is like a computer, but it is not easy to say that computers have brain or like a brain. When the computer analyze data, it can give only 3 results or a number of fixed result made by the programmer, but when we analyze things, we can come up with hundreds of different conclusions.

In my opinion the brain is a supercomputer. The evolution of computer comes from model of our brain. The computer needs micro ships and computer programming to run a computer. But in brain it is not needed. It reveals the power of God. It can be created only by God not any human being.The storage capacity of our brain is unlimited but the computer is unlimited.So on the whole I can say Brain is similar to computer.

I feel in a lot of ways our Brain is like a computer as it is often given so many different ways to adapt to things, and understand things, and challenge things. We know that no matter who we are we will often disagree with someone or something and that is OK. Even with being a member here in myLot we will find our differences. It is how we react with those diffences that helps make us different from those around us as well.

Hi there! Good Post! The contents of your post tell that brain is something like computer; it could perform certain functions better than computer, while in some functions computer could take lead. After all it was a human brain which devised and developed a working computer and it is human brain which keeps on making improvement in the functioning of computers.

Well in a certain way, that would be something that I would have to agree with. The brain is a computer, a very, very advanced version of a computer. An advanced version of a computer that cannot be recreated by technology at the time. The brain is so complex that for all we know right now, there is just so much that we do not know as well. So yes in a certain extent, in fact for years, people have in certain ways been trying to duplicate the complexity of the human mind with a computer. It hasn't really gotten really gotten too far off of the ground in many ways. The fact is that since we do not know what the human mind will do and all of the quirks it had, it cannot be duplicated. However it is a key for processing information, which is in a sense is what computers are used for.

Somehow, I believe there is a connection between brain and computer, it is that they have similarity in function, and how they receive information and process information, also interpret the information after we process them. That is a pretty interesting concept to us. Anyway, we all doing the same every single day, and we use our brain to its limit.

I have read a similar write up a few years ago that are brain is made in such a way that it resembles a computer. It must be the same reason why the computer was develop because it was founded on this same precept. Our brain even works better than a computer actually. According to experts we are just using a minor portion of what our brains can allow us to use. There must be something about the saying that brain over matter works because the brain is that powerful.