Victoria G. Calvert

Cerebral cortical communication overshadows computational energy-use, but these combine to predict synapse number

The paper quantifies energy use in neural computation and communication, finding communication costs are 35-fold higher than computation, and predicts synaptic transmission numbers.

Computation in the human cerebral cortex uses less than 0.2 watts yet this great expense is optimal when considering communication costs

The paper audits the energy consumption of human brain computation, finding cortical computation uses less than 0.2 watts while communication costs are much higher.