The study, ‘The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?’, was published by the journal Neuron earlier this month. To carry out the analysis, the researchers examined data on human behaviours such as reading, writing, etc.

What are the findings of the study?

Markus Meister, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the study, told The New York Times that “It is a bit of a counterweight to the endless hyperbole about how incredibly complex and powerful the human brain is… If you actually try to put numbers to it, we are incredibly slow.”

The researchers noted that the human brain processes sensory information from sight, smell and sound much more rapidly — about 100,000,000 times the rate that cognition does. In other words, while humans can process one thought at a time, their sensory systems — and computers — process thousands of bits of information at once. “Psychological science has not acknowledged this big conflict,” Meister told The NYT.

The slow pace of conscious thought could be a result of how human brains have evolved. “Our ancestors have chosen an ecological niche where the world is slow enough to make survival possible,” according to the study. “In fact, the 10 bits per second are needed only in worst case situations, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace.”

Some researchers are not entirely convinced by the findings of the new study. Britton Sauerbrei, a neuroscientist at Case Western Reserve University told The NYT that the study may not have fully captured the flow of information in the human nervous system. If those were included, “you’re going to end up with a vastly higher bit rate,” he said.