Non-destructive whole-brain monitoring using nanorobots : neural electrical data rate requirements

Neuronanorobotics, a promising future medical technology, may provide the ultimate tool for achieving comprehensive non-destructive real-time in vivo monitoring of the many information channels in the human brain. This paper focuses on the electrical information channel and employs a novel electrophysiological approach to estimate the data rate requirements, calculated to be (5.52 ± 1.13) x 1016 bits/sec in an entire living human brain, for acquiring, transmitting, and storing singleneuron electrical information using medical nanorobots, corresponding to an estimated synapticprocessed spike rate of (4.31 ± 0.86) x 1015 spikes/sec.Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Minho (CMAT). The principal author (NRBM) thanks the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) for their financial support of this work (grant SFRH/BD/69660/2010)