I guess I have a question of what OP meant when saying your sensory organs "absorb" gigabits per second of information. In my reading, I took that to mean sensory input that actually makes it into the brain. After all, asphalt absorbs that same information, but I don't think that is a particularly interesting use of the infirmation.

In another reply I quoted research that shows that only ~10 kbits/sec make it even into layer 4 of v1 from the optic nerve.

If you have anything talking about spinal processing I'd love to read it.

Not sure what you're looking for specifically, but a quick search for Spinal Nerve (or bundle!) Processing will give you a ton of results. Restrict yourself to pub med or google scholar, because there are a lot of mediocre results.

I think the main confusion here was over the definition of 'absorb'. Your version is much narrower than I'd use. The sensory molecular pathways and accompanying structure of nerves themselves produce significant processing right at the outset which your definition would entirely discount. There is no reason to discount what would otherwise become 'pre-processing' in your model.

oh_sigh:

"the amount that actually makes it into our brain is far less, probably on the order of a hundreds of bits/sec max"

ABCLAW:

"Even the spinal nerve bundle processes orders of magnitude more information just in keeping you balanced on your feet or chair."

Does that information actually make it to the brain? I thought sending a signal to the brain to process it there and then send back balancing signals would take too much time to keep you on your feet (at around 100m/s, a nerve signal would take about 1/50 of a second to move from legs to brain and back)

There also is evidence that your spine can do quite a bit of the muscle control needed for balancing on its own. See knee reflex and spinal cat (completely cut the spinal cord of a cat in the neck; notice that cat is paralyzed. Hang cat in harness, with feet on a treadmill. Turn on treadmill; cat walks (possibly only after some training; I don't know the details). Known since the 1950's. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spinal-cats-walk/ (paywalled)).

Not all of the information processed in the main spinal nerve bundles make it to the brain. Note that I'm not replying to the 'reaches our brain' portion of his statement with my counter-example. I think that's a very arbitrary place to delimit the human information processing system.

The cerebellum is part of the brain, and it is responsible for balancing and motor coordination.