Neuron Lithography Technique

An Anonymous Coward writes: "EE Times has an article about a new technique to build custom-designed networks from biological neurons using chip lithography and polymers to steer the growth of the neurons . Some of the first computers were described as "electronic brains" to the unwashed masses - will researchers have to describe these as "biological computers"?"

Comments

i got th

[insomniac]

efirst |o0st

Re:i got th

[Anonymous Coward]

I woulda had first post but i was to busy burning this RTM copy of WinXP Pro...

Re:i got th

[Anonymous Coward]

8====D <----- my cock

(_o_) <----- your poop chute

*drip* *drip*

Re:i got th

[Anonymous Coward]

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Good GOD...

[Soko]

People call me a Chiphead now. With this, I'm really fscked.

Soko

Re:Good GOD...

[ElJefe]

People call me a Chiphead now.

Maybe you should take the Pringles out of your ears. Just a suggestion...

-Chris

Re:Good GOD...

[Anonymous Coward]

they said it could be designed for prosthesis. who would need a prosthetic brain? LOL...

2nd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup

neurolithography is antiquated!

[Anonymous Coward]

but let me suggest this is post is FAST. In fact its so god damn FAST it would make Keanu Reeves head spin !

Second post

[Anonymous Coward]

sp!

hmmm

[jupiter$spectre]

and in the never-ending quest for an artificially created brain, scientists are now making circuits out of brain cells! woohoo!

Hey...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you go fucking get a motherfucking life you god damned jew?

Heh..

[Anonymous Coward]

ThinkGeek SUCKS! Fuck them!

Re:Heh..

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, thinkgeek is cheesy.

copyleft is way better.

But since it doens't have a giant (but failing fast) corporation like VA Linux behind it to waste cash on banner ads all over the place no one knows about it.

Stop it! Stop whining!

[Anonymous DWord]

My CPU is a neural net processor- a learning computer.

shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

what a load of bunk. this is all falsifalities and untruthified bunk. i'd prove it, but it's not even worth it, because you are all too stupid to understand anyways. ignorant snotballs, you can install mandrake and you think you are god. the last thing i want to hear is your bitching, so get the hell out of here you worthless pile of mentally retarded spooge.

Re:shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

What? That makes little or no sense. Trolls don't even have any substance anymore. What a sad day this is for Slashdot.org. Hey, where's the ascii-art guy? That stuff is teh win

The strength of neurons

[Glowing Fish]

While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it, artificially causing neurons to grow rules out of one of their main strengths.

Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

If you are directing neurons into what direction they are growing totally, then what you have is a really squishy computer circuit.

Re:The strength of neurons

[James Lanfear]

While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it

There have been two potential applications I've seen mentioned.

• Biosensors. This doesn't have much to do with neurons per se, but with having access to very good chemical sensors that can be interfaced to other equipment. Neurons fit these requirements, at least for a limited range of chemicals.
• Human-Machine interfaces, and specifically, interfaces for prosthetics. The problems with the neurochips that you point out could work in their favor in this area: you could have (relatively) controlled, deterministic behavior, but in a form that is far easier to "plug in" to the nervous system than silicon. Naturally, they would also be excellent for interfacing instruments to nervous systems for research purposes.

Re:The strength of neurons

[dragons_flight]

Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

It's not that simple. Basic nueroscience (of the poke and see what happens variety) recognizes that the brain is composed of many massively interconnected functional groups. In everyone the centers for speech, math, motor skills, etc. are roughly located in the same places. (Yes nature can compensate for damage in some cases, but retraining parts to do other work is slower and often less effective than the original)

People and animals are genetically coded to design brains in certain ways. Merely having lots of nuerons doesn't guarantee intelligence or functionality. A lot of it has to do with where inputs come in and where the outputs go out and how the groups are connected along the way. Also there are different types of nuerons with different nuerotransmitters and degrees of interconnectedness.

That said, yes the nuerons to some degree govern themselves. An architechture is built up and then nuerons respond in complicated and individual ways to some, as yet poorly understood, system for learning and development. If the brain really is all there is to intelligence than memory and learning have to be a product of something the nuerons are doing. Unless there is some uber mechanism directing all the nuerons, then learning has to be a natural result of what nuerons. Crudely put this might be divided into two categories (as we understand it today):

1. Nuerons like to fire in the same patterns they've seen before.
2. Nuerons like to make new connections.

Thoughts, especially memories, aren't random, they are similar to thoughts that have occured before. Roughly speaking it appears that the brain likes doing things it has done before, and thus learning. One way this is accomplished is by strengthening connections between nerves that have fired together in the past and weakening ones that don't often fire together.

The second thing is that nerves do like to grow. Not so much that it makes the brain random or chaotic, but enough to allow new patterns to be formed and improve on existing ones (for instance shortening the number of nuerons a common path goes through).

No one really understands how it all interacts, or how the features of nuerons relate to our preferences for certain outcomes over others (e.g. what in the brains causes pleasures to be reinforced and painful experiences to be avoided). This is however a good first step at being able to study nueronal circuitry in a highly controlled way.

Besides if you really expect functional "squishy" computers than something has to provide the initial framework that genetics and evolution has arranged in the animal kingdom. Build some nueron groups in meaningful ways, provide some mechanism for learning in an input/output environment (perhaps similar to how people try to train nueral computer networks), and then remove the restrictions on growth and connectedness and let the structures optimize and develop themselves.

Re:The strength of neurons

[plastik55]

IAANS (I am a neuroscientist.)

I think the best immediate application for this kind of technology is not in constructign useful biological circuits, but in doing basic research on the properties of the nerve cells themselves. Traditionally, most of our knowledge about how nerve cells operate has come from studies of single cells in isolation, and in vitro recording. Neither of these techniques give very much information about the mechanisms which govern interaction between neurons, especially in the ways that their growth and behavior is influenced by neighboring cells. A technique which allows us to control the growth of a nerve culture would be a great tool for studying those interactions, becaue you would be able to more tightly control the interactions present (as opposed to blindly jamming electrodes into brains and trying to infer circuits and connections from correlations in firing patterns, which is more or less the standard technique.)

Koch in Biophysics of Computation showed that given what we know about neurons, they can theoretically implement equivalents of addition, multiplication, feedback, and many other computations, all within a single cell! The range of possibilities is enourmous, and requires a controlled environment to study the different tyeps of interactions. This could be a very important tool for research.

Re:The strength of neurons

[Reality Master 101]

Koch in Biophysics of Computation

Thanks for the link. I've had some interest lately in the inner workings of neurons and that looks like an excellent book on the subject. Do you have any other book recommendations for people with interest in this subject?

I also saw an interesting post in the Amazon reviews of this book. A researcher(?) posted that the book doesn't go into his apparently favorite theory (which might be recent) that neuron communication is actually multichannel, rather than the standard binary/linear pulse that is normally assumed. Do you have any references for research about that theory?

Thanks in advance.

Re:The strength of neurons

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, actually knowing something about the subject, you don't get any mod points. That goes to the guy who spells it "nuerons." Sigh.

Re:The strength of neurons

[Anonymous Coward]

IAANIT (I am a neuroscientist in training)

I am also at the U of I where Dr. Wheeler's research is being done, but he really is more of a EE guy than neuro.

I was thinking that all of the researchers working on the stomatogastric ganglia (like Dr. DiCaprio at Ohio U., Dr. Hooper at CWRU, or Dr. Harris-Warrick at Cornell) could use some of this technology to construct mimetic copies of the ganlia connections and use it for their work - this would allow the easy and proactical CHANGING of variables in the ganlion system and observing the results on the network dynamics.

Also, Kudos on mentioning Dr. Koch - I've noticed the problem that every time a neuroscience/neural net story gets posted here - we get tons of uninformed comments from people ignorant of most of the field - it's nice to see other scientists read here :)

Sincerely,
Kevin Christie
crispiewm@hotmail.com

Re:The strength of neurons

[DuranDuran]

and pr0n. Lots and lots of pr0n.

Nun attacked by pit-bulls in schoolyard

[Anonymous Coward]

By Susan Snyder and Monica Rhor , INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

A Roman Catholic nun from Incarnation School in Olney was attacked by two pit bulls while walking the convent's dog in the school yard yesterday.

When Sister Barbara Koehler saw the two pit bulls lunge for the Jack Russell terrier, her first move was to rescue the terrified dog.

The 61-year-old nun pulled the pit bulls away from the terrier and barely managed to shout, "Run, Lindy," before she, too, came under attack.

The two pit bulls, which neighbors say have been roaming the area for days and had already attacked at least one other resident, knocked Sister Barbara to the ground and bit her on the hands and neck.

Even more proof that God hates Catholics. Those un-american, pope-loving scum can all be attacked by pit-bulls, for all I care.

Re:Nun attacked by pit-bulls in schoolyard

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody should electrify this child's brain for a minute or two. that will shut him up. He Is Worthlesser than my dog's farts and poop.

Re:Nun attacked by pit-bulls in schoolyard

[Anonymous Coward]

I live about 2 miles from Olney.

If anything, it proves that God loves Catholics by sparing the nun.

It also proves that if there is hatred, it is contrived by men. Men who raise attack animals, then unleash them in quiet suburban neihborhoods.

This also includes hate-filled, Anti-intellectual men who equate hardship with hatred from God. Go read Job ... oh wait, our anti-intellectual ... never mind.

Re:Nun attacked by pit-bulls in schoolyard

[Anonymous Coward]

God ate my balls

Re:Nun attacked by pit-bulls in schoolyard

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make any sense. Jack Russell terriers and rat terriers aren't as tough as pit bulls, but one thing they are NOT, is afraid of pit bulls.

The rat terrier I used to have would have charged the Four Fucking Horsemen of the Apocalypse and torn at least three of 'em a new one.

R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

R & B singer and actor Aaliyah died today in a plane crash at age 22. She will be missed. Even if you didn't listen to where music you probably wacked off ot one of her videos. Truly an american nigger.

Re:R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you sick perverted trolls go to stileproject where you belong. Have some respect for the dead.

Re:R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly an american nigger.

Indeed!

Re:R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

Gloria Knowles, who works for Abaco Air Ltd. at Marsh Harbour airport, said baggage handlers reported the plane was overloaded with niggers.

She said the handlers and the plane's pilot complained about the heavy niggers but the passengers insisted on taking every nigger with them.

Re:R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

SPF is on fuckin strike dammit

so shut up and post some dead baby jokes here ya schmuck *fap* *fap*

Re:R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did they have to take off every 'nig'? why couldn't they have left the cotton picking machines behind.

Re:R & B Singer Aaliyah dead at 22

[Anonymous Coward]

for great justice

move 'nig'

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

wow i'm posting this comment and i don't even know what the headline was never mind the story.

heh.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

glad to see i'm not the only smart one in there, i don't read headlines either

it takes a special kinda stupid to read slashdot stories

HAL?

[Ziviyr]

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid, Dave.

Dave, my mind is going.

I can feel it.

I can feel it.

Re:HAL?

[Anonymous Coward]

HAL, can you feel my cock up your arse?

Can you feel it?

Don't be afraid, HAL, suck it down.

*drip* *drip*

Re:HAL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic? Neurons? Commonly used in brains? Entities with brains tending to have emotions and feelings? Future computing having somthing to do with these new chip things? With neurons in them?

Yeah, this is offtopic.

Can you imagine

[Modus Nonsens]

Can you imagine how it would be like to write software for a biological computer?

Re:Can you imagine

[Ziviyr]

Tedious. I'd expect these would be for ASICs mostly. :-)

Re:Can you imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is what happens when you spill beer into your neural-net PC...

Stile is a fucking JEW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off you kike lover!

Re:Stile is a fucking JEW!

[Anonymous Coward]

I long to live in a world where people can see past religious and ethnic differences, and live in harmony. And, most of all, where cocksuckers like your are used for sharkbait.

What about people?

[Anonymous Coward]

So we have found a controlled way to grow real neurological circuits. Why don't they use this for a real cause and start helping people with neurological damage?

Re:What about people?

[tedsvmax]

Now thats a good suggestion,
with cloning and such, they should be able to grow parts as we need them.
Hmmm who wants to live forever.
Only if I can still play tennis and watch cartoons in 150 years :)

Arnold Schwarzenegger

[Anonymous Coward]

"a self leAUrning microchip!"

Robocop

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead or alive, you are coming with me!

Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Friends, it has come to my attention that Michelle Simms has struck again. As most of you know, a few hours ago an Anonymous Coward managed to exploit one of the new 'features' in Slashcode 2. The result was pretty harmless, merely a JavaScript popup window asking if you'd rather go and see goatcx.se. From my limited knowledge of JavaScript, I don't see anything stopping the aforesaid AC from having written a silent password stealer instead.

Naturally, CmdrTaco et al. have corrected the bug. However, Michelle Simms, not content with a gracious bug report, proceeded to delete the comment. Yes, I tell you truly, for the second time in its history Slashdot has gone against its self-stated principles and has censored a comment.

Friends, the time has come to unite against Michelle's foul regime. Only by demanding that CmdrTaco finds a replacement for this unAmericam Censorship Nazi will we ever be able to use the Internet freely again.

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael is a flaming hypocrit and although I cant qualify your argument, I do believe it.

Doesn't it seem outrageous that Slashdot would hire Michael Sims ? Does it not bother anyone that Michael Sims CENSORED www.censorware.org (Quite ironic isn't it!)

I'm not at all surprised michael would delete your comments.., this is typical of Michael.

I am asking Slashdot and VALinux to please release Michael Sims from employment. There is no need to employ a hypocritcal jerk like him.

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't my comment. I'm not smart enough to figure things like that out. I just wish whoever posted the comment had been logged in, so that there would have been a userinfo page as evidence...

BTW, anyone owning up to having done it? I'd be more than happy to contribute to a medal :)

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

goatcx.se
A troll who can't spell goatse correctly isn't even worth the bandwidth.

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND. You should start reading GiZ, then you'd understand.
A so-called troll who can't read GiZ isn't even worth the air they breathe.

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, goatcx.se is what the original comment said.

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if know what the original comment id was, just look for it not being there -- that should be evidence enough.

Re:Michelle Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

hear! hear! we need a lynch mob.

Aaliyah is not dead dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, and Eminem and Stephen King are dead too. And Britney Spears crashed her Ferrari.

Now I hear your mom wants her computer back, so you better go watch Teletubbies or something.

Targeted advertisement?

[Ziviyr]

Anyone else notice the TI DSP sponsoring and advert?

I bet they're just itching to make a neural net do FLOPs. :-)

Re:Stop it! Stop whining!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a cop you idiot!

Erm, actually, she is...

[Anonymous Coward]

this BBC article says she is. Pretty good, to get a genuine "is dead" for once...

Philosophy Singer Nietzsche dead at 167

[Anonymous Coward]

Philosophy singer and actor Nietzsche died today in a plane crash at age 167. He will be missed. Even if you
didn't listen to where music you probably wacked off ot one of his videos. Truly an philosophy brainfart.

Re:Philosophy Singer Nietzsche dead at 167

[Anonymous Coward]

BWAHAHAHA, hehhe ahhhh that was mad funny dude.

My apologies

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was one of those hoaxes again.

I didn't know...

[Ziviyr]

...and well I still don't know alot of this stuff. It just looks neat and I want more karma.

Quantum Consciousness. Neural stuff.

100% goat-neuron free. ;-D

Show respect, if you know how

[Modus Nonsens]

Is it completely impossible for you people to show a tiny little bit of respect, at all?

Aaliyah, rest in peace.

Yes, I'm wasting karma, I don't care.

Re:Show respect, if you know how

[Anonymous Coward]

what are you, a mafia godfather?

ya want us to show yous some rispetto... vafa'n culo!

Re:Show respect, if you know how

[Anonymous Coward]

To get respect first you have to be respectable.

Good idea...

[Thaidog]

If this gets pushed like the good idea it is, I'm sure it will happen!

your mom ate my balls

[Anonymous Coward]

your mom ate my balls

New trend?

[gad_zuki!]

With this recent salon piece on how starfish parts could be used in computing and the neural net made out of neurons I think this could be a very interesting trend.

The site is already slashdotted, man its 4am here, but if nature has already done a good job in design why not borrow it for other purposes. Its like Junkyard Wars but on a very small and living scale.

A nice bonus with using cellurar material is there probably wont be ethical complaints i.e. who identifies with neurons?

Re:New trend?

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen pal why don't you just bugger off. No one wants to read your "insightful" and "informative" crap. If you can't post a troll, don't post anything at all. Fucker.

Re:New trend?

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen bud, just GO TO HELL !!!

Your post was completely wrong and everything you describe is a lie. So suck it hard !!! ASSHOLE !!!!!!

Re:New trend?

[Ziviyr]

who identifies with neurons?

Not me, neurons tend to zap those they get close to. They and they make dwarves look huuuuge.

Yup, neurons ain't done nutin' fer me.

I hate niggers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I do. I especially hate fat lard-ass welfare queens

Another step along the way

[not-quite-rite]

A lot of people don't realise how good this sort of thing is.This sort of tech is just a start, but if progresses, is a great boon to mankind.
The process of growing neurons in a circuit and allow interfacing of different types of neurons and electrical components is, I believe, fundamental to biochip technology.
As a student of Prosthetics/Orthotics and Biomedical Engineering, this is exactly the sort of progress needed for greater synthesis of humans and their environment.

The body is in many ways just a collection of tools, and the mind has adapted to use these tools. But when one of the tools is lost, there is great trouble in dealing with the loss(on a grief scale = to loss of a husband/wife).
Children can adapt easier as they are still learning to use their tools. This is why myoelectric prostheses work quite well with children(myo prothetics are very instinctual). This sort of technology can allow greater integration of prosthetic limbs/organs as limbs can be designed to deal directly with the human 'meatware'.

Don't even get me started on control of extenal devices like vehicles, surgical tools, or augmentation of mental systems, otherwise I'll be ranting for ever.

I am very excited, must remember to breath :)

Yo Yo Yo

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't do nuttin for ya man, Neury Nueron got problems of his own.

word up.

Re:Yo Yo Yo

[Anonymous Coward]

what're you some kind of nigger or somthin?

Re:Yo Yo Yo

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it cuz I is black?

No one wants to see that karma whore shit here

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you take that shit to some lame site like kuroshin where a bunch of stuffy under sexed nerds who flip through the thesaurus looking for smart sounding words can offer a out of touch with reality communist opinion on it.

Ok tonto.

Get lost.

Re:No one wants to see that karma whore shit here

[not-quite-rite]

I am saddened by your lack of vision.

I will look forward to buying your house and family.

Re:No one wants to see that karma whore shit here

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a secret: Those stock options they give to fresh state U CS grads aren't actually worth anything.

shhh, don't tell anybody else though...

Re:No one wants to see that karma whore shit here

[not-quite-rite]

From Australia.

Does not apply, we leave university with nothing but a degree and debt.

And then we go over to America where money means something.

Re:No one wants to see that karma whore shit here

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever eat corn and then poop and the corn was in the poop and you could see it?

Major advancement?

[Balinares]

People, this is good. I may be biased toward that matter, but I'm watching closely this kind of development. As well as, I imagine, about every other person with a disability caused by nerve damage or destruction (total deafness in one ear in my case) (yeah, so I don't need to encode my MP3s in stereo).

My bio courses are far behind me, but aren't nerves the 'tail' of neurons?

Re:Major advancement?

[not-quite-rite]

A nerve is a collection of neurons.

The tail you are thinking of is the axon of the neuron.

And I agree this is very good.

you liar.

[Anonymous Coward]

People will make up all kinds of lies just for karma, it's disgusting.

the Jews are the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Jews really uk. Jews really suck.

I don't like Jews.

Re: Anne Tomlinson finally speaks out

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that's true. The web page you link to seems like a troll fabrication. Give me a way to independently confirm this and you've convinced me.

hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Man shut the fuck up ok.

ASCII art

[Anonymous Coward]

They deleted my "shovel-bird" post... :-\

I love nun porn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Convent of Hell and other great toon porn!

(Remember to disable JavaScript to avoid the annoying ad pop-up screens)

Reminds me of another experiment

[not-quite-rite]

I can't remeber the source otherwise I would cite it, but does anyone remember the experiment where researchers just grew foetal neurons on/in a slab of hole riddled silicon, and then promptly slid it into the spine of a paraplegic patient.

Apparently 60% return of function with physio. Considered one of the major stepping stones in biochips.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the parent of this reply? Enough with the censorship, we're adults and can form our own opinions.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that Slashdot does NOT censor posts, but this is all a troll fed conspiracy theory.

It has all the trademarks of a classical conspiracy theory.

There is no real evidence whatsoever. Those who claim there is evidence, also say it's being withheld by the authorities (in this case the /. editors). Furthermore, the more the authorities deny it, the more the conspiracy theorists believe it's really taking place.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Slashdot censors posts. Don't you remember the thing with the scientologists, shit the editors (micheal censormaster sims and taco) had no choice but to admit it that time.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but censoring because of the threat of a lawsuit is different from censoring posts just because you don't like it.

I fully accept their decision to censor the Scientology post.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you show your true censor loving ways there's no going back. Once a censormaster always a censormaster.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Sure they got cuaght red handed that time, but how many other times did they cover it up and no one but a troll with a band ip knows about it?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.

Give me solid, hard evidence of the Slashdot censorship. Otherwise shut up. The Scientology case doesn't count because it was done to avoid a lawsuit.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know they're not removing other stuff to avoid a lawsuit? Maybe some troll criticized the wrong company and they got a nasty gram and removed it.

Or are you just some slashdot censormaster astro turfing? Trying to put a little positive spin on the disappearing post eh?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, get a life. You do know there are good drugs for paranoia?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on to you.

biological what?

[gabriel_aristos]

I can just see it.. "Hi, my name's Beowulf, and it's very nice to meet you. I'm a beowulf cluster.."

-j

Re:biological what?

[Anonymous Coward]

shut up spic.

you too ?

[Anonymous Coward]

hope you don't get what I got

Hi VA Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

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; ll l\____/
| ll l

Re:Hi VA Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

huh?

Re:Hi VA Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

___....---"""".
." ". L \
/ \ N i
i i i
i__ _ i U i
" "\\ i i
|| i X i
__.// i _ . - "i
\ i- " i
i ii L i
\ / i i
"._.--"i N i
i i
i U i
i _i
i X _.-"
i _.-"
i-"

Respect for the dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit some living people do deserve respect, but the dead?

They don't know or feel about anything anymore, so why should we respect them?

Grow A Brain

[ryanisflyboy]

Wow. This gives whole new meaning to the term "go grow a brain." I can just imagine hearing a complaint in the future. "Yeah - my neutrient bath failed and my computer died... guess I'll have to start growing a new one." What's even better is that rat embryos are the source of it all! Who knew rats could be so smart? Would it go faster if I put some cheese in front of it? When it starts acting up I can threaten it with a mouse trap. Maybe it would freeze every time my cat walked by. And when you get a virus - it could mean a biological virus. I'm sure that transporting this stuff would be difficult after it is grown - so more than likely you would have to grow it on location. Hauling your box to your next LAN party would be a major pain in the ass!

It seems to me this is one step closer to understanding how our brains generate thoughts and actions. In the future this type of technology could be used to extend the capabilites of our own bodies through the insertion of a tiny titanium chip. Maybe it could control nerves - making it possible to filter what signles are sent to the brain. You could insert them into a bunch of soldiers and make them impervious to pain and have the body generate adrenaline on demand. That would be rad.

Re:Grow A Brain

[Ziviyr]

So would your computer getting depressed and taking its own, errr, functionality.

I'm sure the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has something to say about this...

Re:Grow A Brain

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose overclocking could be achived via caffine. Or crack, or crystal meth... "Oh man, I was getting 875 FPS in Quake, but then my CPU sold all my stuff on Ebay, and said it wouldn't run Quake again until I bought it more drugs. Damn!"

slashdot sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

PeNiS * PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *PeNiS *

_,-%/%|
_,-' \//%\
_,-' \%/|%
P E N I S _,-' __,-- /%\
for _,-' _,-'%(% ; %)%
Y O U _,-' _,-' %\%, %\
_,-' _,-' '--%'
_,-' _,-'
_,-' _,-'
_,-' _,-' Enjoy slashfags!
/ / ) _,-'
\__/_,-

* Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic.
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yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowed HTML:

1. • 
     
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Re:yay

[Anonymous Coward]

B>

1. • 
     B>

     * Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. * Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. * Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal. This fortune is encrypted -- get your decoder rings readyportant Stuff: * Please try to keep posts on topic. * Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. * Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. * Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. * Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal. This fortune is encrypted -- get your decoder rings ready! All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2001 OSDN. [ home | awards | supporters | ! All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2001 OSDN. [ home | awards | supporters | ! All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2001 OSDN. [ home | awards | supporters |

oops

[plastik55]

s/in vitro/in vivo/ above. (That is, electrodes in living animals.) There has been some work on trying to study networks in vitro as well (i.e., in an artificial cell culture grown on an electrode array,) but it's quite difficult--good electrodes are hard to make small enough, and even on the best electrode arrays you have to rely on luck to provide you with cells that wind up close enough to the electrodes to provide a good signal, and you wtill have very little idea about how the cells are connected. Another problem is the neurons will tend to move around a bit, so it's hard to track changes over time in such a culture. These problems could also be helped by this technique, by controlling the growth of interconnections and keeping the cells happy in one place.

Re:oops

[mmol_6453]

s/in vivo/in TiVo/

Watch and record the process!

woah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot almost has 4 hours of continous uptime!

Go open source go!

hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know where i can download a warez copy of sourceforge enterprise edition?

Now that VA Linux sells closed source software like Microsoft maybe one of you warez d00dz can hook me up?

sooo

[Anonymous Coward]

so taco how does it feel to be the sole source of income for VA Linux HAHA

fuck you

[Anonymous Coward]

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Neuron Lithography Technique
Posted by michael on Sunday August 26, 0351AM
from the brain2.0 dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes "EE Times has an article about a new technique to build customdesigned networks from biological neurons using chip lithography and polymers to steer the growth of the neurons . Some of the first computers were described as "electronic brains" to the unwashed masses will researchers have to describe these as "biological computers"?"
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Neuron Lithography Technique Preferences Top 105 comments Search Discussion
Threshold 1 105 comments 0 93 comments 1 26 comments 2 12 comments 3 3 comments 4 0 comments 5 0 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First Ignore Threads Newest First Ignore Threads Save
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i got th Score1
by insomniac on Sunday August 26, 0351AM 2217683
User 33758 Info
efirst o0st
insomniac
Reply to This Parent

Rei got th Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0521AM 2217786
I woulda had first post but i was to busy burning this RTM copy of WinXP Pro...

Reply to This Parent

Rei got th Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0618AM 2217843
8====D my cock

o your poop chute

drip drip

Reply to This Parent

Good GOD... Score2
by Soko NOrsokoloski1SPhome.AMcom on Sunday August 26, 0356AM 2217688
User 17987 Info httpmembers.home.netrsokoloski1
People call me a Chiphead now. With this, I'm really fscked.

Soko
What the hell, it's only Karma.
Reply to This Parent

ReGood GOD... Score2
by ElJefe on Sunday August 26, 0510AM 2217769
User 41718 Info httpazureforest.caltech.edu

People call me a Chiphead now.
Maybe you should take the Pringles out of your ears. Just a suggestion...

Chris

Reply to This Parent

2nd? Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0356AM 2217689
Yup

Reply to This Parent

neurolithography is antiquated! Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0357AM 2217691
but let me suggest this is post is FAST. In fact its so god damn FAST it would make Keanu Reeves head spin !

Reply to This Parent

Second post Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0358AM 2217694
sp!

Reply to This Parent

hmmm Score1
by jupiter$spectre on Sunday August 26, 0400AM 2217698
User 444183 Info
and in the neverending quest for an artificially created brain, scientists are now making circuits out of brain cells! woohoo!
um, no.
Reply to This Parent

Hey... Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0401AM 2217699
Why don't you go fucking get a motherfucking life you god damned jew?

Reply to This Parent

the Jews are the problem Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0543AM 2217816
Jews really suck. Jews really suck.
I don't like Jews 206.244.69.51.

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Heh.. Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0406AM 2217702
ThinkGeek SUCKS! Fuck them!

Reply to This Parent

ReHeh.. Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0432AM 2217730
yup, thinkgeek is cheesy.

copyleft copyleft.net is way better.

But since it doens't have a giant but failing fast corporation like VA Linux behind it to waste cash on banner ads all over the place no one knows about it.

Reply to This Parent

Stop it! Stop whining! Score2, Funny
by Anonymous DWord on Sunday August 26, 0409AM 2217706
User 466154 Info
My CPU is a neural net processor a learning computer.

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ReStop it! Stop whining! Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0455AM 2217756
I'm a cop you idiot!

Reply to This Parent

shut up Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0411AM 2217708
what a load of bunk. this is all falsifalities and untruthified bunk. i'd prove it, but it's not even worth it, because you are all too stupid to understand anyways. ignorant snotballs, you can install mandrake and you think you are god. the last thing i want to hear is your bitching, so get the hell out of here you worthless pile of mentally retarded spooge.

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Reshut up Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0413AM 2217712
What? That makes little or no sense. Trolls don't even have any substance anymore. What a sad day this is for Slashdot.org. Hey, where's the asciiart guy? That stuff is teh win

Reply to This Parent

ASCII art Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0555AM 2217827
They deleted my "shovelbird" post...

Reply to This Parent

The strength of neurons Score3, Insightful
by Glowing Fish mnoelharrisonmapsursine.dyndns.org on Sunday August 26, 0413AM 2217713
User 155236 Info httpursine.dyndns.org~mnoelharris
While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it, artificially causing neurons to grow rules out of one of their main strengths.

Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

If you are directing neurons into what direction they are growing totally, then what you have is a really squishy computer circuit.

Hopefully I didn't put any around my words...
Reply to This Parent

ReThe strength of neurons Score2
by James Lanfear on Sunday August 26, 0506AM 2217763
User 34124 Info
While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it
There have been two potential applications I've seen mentioned.

Biosensors. This doesn't have much to do with neurons per se, but with having access to very good chemical sensors that can be interfaced to other equipment. Neurons fit these requirements, at least for a limited range of chemicals.
HumanMachine interfaces, and specifically, interfaces for prosthetics. The problems with the neurochips that you point out could work in their favor in this area you could have relatively controlled, deterministic behavior, but in a form that is far easier to "plug in" to the nervous system than silicon. Naturally, they would also be excellent for interfacing instruments to nervous systems for research purposes.

Reply to This Parent

ReThe strength of neurons Score3, Informative
by dragonsflight on Sunday August 26, 0534AM 2217803
User 515217 Info httpbounce.toBobby
Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

It's not that simple. Basic nueroscience of the poke and see what happens variety recognizes that the brain is composed of many massively interconnected functional groups. In everyone the centers for speech, math, motor skills, etc. are roughly located in the same places. Yes nature can compensate for damage in some cases, but retraining parts to do other work is slower and often less effective than the original

People and animals are genetically coded to design brains in certain ways. Merely having lots of nuerons doesn't guarantee intelligence or functionality. A lot of it has to do with where inputs come in and where the outputs go out and how the groups are connected along the way. Also there are different types of nuerons with different nuerotransmitters and degrees of interconnectedness.

That said, yes the nuerons to some degree govern themselves. An architechture is built up and then nuerons respond in complicated and individual ways to some, as yet poorly understood, system for learning and development. If the brain really is all there is to intelligence than memory and learning have to be a product of something the nuerons are doing. Unless there is some uber mechanism directing all the nuerons, then learning has to be a natural result of what nuerons. Crudely put this might be divided into two categories as we understand it today

Nuerons like to fire in the same patterns they've seen before.
Nuerons like to make new connections.
Thoughts, especially memories, aren't random, they are similar to thoughts that have occured before. Roughly speaking it appears that the brain likes doing things it has done before, and thus learning. One way this is accomplished is by strengthening connections between nerves that have fired together in the past and weakening ones that don't often fire together.

The second thing is that nerves do like to grow. Not so much that it makes the brain random or chaotic, but enough to allow new patterns to be formed and improve on existing ones for instance shortening the number of nuerons a common path goes through.

No one really understands how it all interacts, or how the features of nuerons relate to our preferences for certain outcomes over others e.g. what in the brains causes pleasures to be reinforced and painful experiences to be avoided. This is however a good first step at being able to study nueronal circuitry in a highly controlled way.

Besides if you really expect functional "squishy" computers than something has to provide the initial framework that genetics and evolution has arranged in the animal kingdom. Build some nueron groups in meaningful ways, provide some mechanism for learning in an inputoutput environment perhaps similar to how people try to train nueral computer networks, and then remove the restrictions on growth and connectedness and let the structures optimize and develop themselves.

Reply to This Parent

ReThe strength of neurons Score2
by plastik55 INOSPAMread.repliesto.myREMOVEposts.edu on Sunday August 26, 0635AM 2217855
User 218435 Info
IAANS I am a neuroscientist.
I think the best immediate application for this kind of technology is not in constructign useful biological circuits, but in doing basic research on the properties of the nerve cells themselves. Traditionally, most of our knowledge about how nerve cells operate has come from studies of single cells in isolation, and in vitro recording. Neither of these techniques give very much information about the mechanisms which govern interaction between neurons, especially in the ways that their growth and behavior is influenced by neighboring cells. A technique which allows us to control the growth of a nerve culture would be a great tool for studying those interactions, becaue you would be able to more tightly control the interactions present as opposed to blindly jamming electrodes into brains and trying to infer circuits and connections from correlations in firing patterns, which is more or less the standard technique.

Koch in Biophysics of Computation showed that given what we know about neurons, they can theoretically implement equivalents of addition, multiplication, feedback, and many other computations, all within a single cell! The range of possibilities is enourmous, and requires a controlled environment to study the different tyeps of interactions. This could be a very important tool for research.
Haha! Easy

Reply to This Parent

oops Score2
by plastik55 INOSPAMread.repliesto.myREMOVEposts.edu on Sunday August 26, 0646AM 2217865
User 218435 Info
sin vitroin vivo above. That is, electrodes in living animals. There has been some work on trying to study networks in vitro as well i.e., in an artificial cell culture grown on an electrode array, but it's quite difficultgood electrodes are hard to make small enough, and even on the best electrode arrays you have to rely on luck to provide you with cells that wind up close enough to the electrodes to provide a good signal, and you wtill have very little idea about how the cells are connected. Another problem is the neurons will tend to move around a bit, so it's hard to track changes over time in such a culture. These problems could also be helped by this technique, by controlling the growth of interconnections and keeping the cells happy in one place.
Haha! Easy
Reply to This Parent

Nun attacked by pitbulls in schoolyard Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0414AM 2217714

By Susan Snyder and Monica Rhor , INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

A Roman Catholic nun from Incarnation School in Olney was attacked by two pit bulls while walking the convent's dog in the school yard yesterday.

When Sister Barbara Koehler saw the two pit bulls lunge for the Jack Russell terrier, her first move was to rescue the terrified dog.

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Neuron Lithography Technique
Posted by michael on Sunday August 26, 0351AM
from the brain2.0 dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes "EE Times has an article about a new technique to build customdesigned networks from biological neurons using chip lithography and polymers to steer the growth of the neurons . Some of the first computers were described as "electronic brains" to the unwashed masses will researchers have to describe these as "biological computers"?"
CVS Infrastructure

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article
More on Technology
Also by michael

Science
Rumble in the Airwaves
Stem Cell Problems Slow Research
Brookhaven Physicists Produce "Doubly Strange Nuclei"
Scientific Elites vs. Illiterates
New LED Backlights For LCD Screens
Fine Structure Time Service
Utilities Included?
The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles
Optical Computers with Starfish Components?
Magnetic Fluid Art

Neuron Lithography Technique Preferences Top 105 comments Search Discussion
Threshold 1 105 comments 0 93 comments 1 26 comments 2 12 comments 3 3 comments 4 0 comments 5 0 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First Ignore Threads Newest First Ignore Threads Save
The Fine Print The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
i got th Score1
by insomniac on Sunday August 26, 0351AM 2217683
User 33758 Info
efirst o0st
insomniac
Reply to This Parent

Rei got th Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0521AM 2217786
I woulda had first post but i was to busy burning this RTM copy of WinXP Pro...

Reply to This Parent

Rei got th Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0618AM 2217843
8====D my cock

o your poop chute

drip drip

Reply to This Parent

Good GOD... Score2
by Soko NOrsokoloski1SPhome.AMcom on Sunday August 26, 0356AM 2217688
User 17987 Info httpmembers.home.netrsokoloski1
People call me a Chiphead now. With this, I'm really fscked.

Soko
What the hell, it's only Karma.
Reply to This Parent

ReGood GOD... Score2
by ElJefe on Sunday August 26, 0510AM 2217769
User 41718 Info httpazureforest.caltech.edu

People call me a Chiphead now.
Maybe you should take the Pringles out of your ears. Just a suggestion...

Chris

Reply to This Parent

2nd? Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0356AM 2217689
Yup

Reply to This Parent

neurolithography is antiquated! Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0357AM 2217691
but let me suggest this is post is FAST. In fact its so god damn FAST it would make Keanu Reeves head spin !

Reply to This Parent

Second post Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0358AM 2217694
sp!

Reply to This Parent

hmmm Score1
by jupiter$spectre on Sunday August 26, 0400AM 2217698
User 444183 Info
and in the neverending quest for an artificially created brain, scientists are now making circuits out of brain cells! woohoo!
um, no.
Reply to This Parent

Hey... Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0401AM 2217699
Why don't you go fucking get a motherfucking life you god damned jew?

Reply to This Parent

the Jews are the problem Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0543AM 2217816
Jews really suck. Jews really suck.
I don't like Jews 206.244.69.51.

Reply to This Parent

Heh.. Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0406AM 2217702
ThinkGeek SUCKS! Fuck them!

Reply to This Parent

ReHeh.. Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0432AM 2217730
yup, thinkgeek is cheesy.

copyleft copyleft.net is way better.

But since it doens't have a giant but failing fast corporation like VA Linux behind it to waste cash on banner ads all over the place no one knows about it.

Reply to This Parent

Stop it! Stop whining! Score2, Funny
by Anonymous DWord on Sunday August 26, 0409AM 2217706
User 466154 Info
My CPU is a neural net processor a learning computer.

Reply to This Parent

ReStop it! Stop whining! Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0455AM 2217756
I'm a cop you idiot!

Reply to This Parent

shut up Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0411AM 2217708
what a load of bunk. this is all falsifalities and untruthified bunk. i'd prove it, but it's not even worth it, because you are all too stupid to understand anyways. ignorant snotballs, you can install mandrake and you think you are god. the last thing i want to hear is your bitching, so get the hell out of here you worthless pile of mentally retarded spooge.

Reply to This Parent

Reshut up Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0413AM 2217712
What? That makes little or no sense. Trolls don't even have any substance anymore. What a sad day this is for Slashdot.org. Hey, where's the asciiart guy? That stuff is teh win

Reply to This Parent

ASCII art Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0555AM 2217827
They deleted my "shovelbird" post...

Reply to This Parent

The strength of neurons Score3, Insightful
by Glowing Fish mnoelharrisonmapsursine.dyndns.org on Sunday August 26, 0413AM 2217713
User 155236 Info httpursine.dyndns.org~mnoelharris
While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it, artificially causing neurons to grow rules out of one of their main strengths.

Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

If you are directing neurons into what direction they are growing totally, then what you have is a really squishy computer circuit.

Hopefully I didn't put any around my words...
Reply to This Parent

ReThe strength of neurons Score2
by James Lanfear on Sunday August 26, 0506AM 2217763
User 34124 Info
While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it
There have been two potential applications I've seen mentioned.

Biosensors. This doesn't have much to do with neurons per se, but with having access to very good chemical sensors that can be interfaced to other equipment. Neurons fit these requirements, at least for a limited range of chemicals.
HumanMachine interfaces, and specifically, interfaces for prosthetics. The problems with the neurochips that you point out could work in their favor in this area you could have relatively controlled, deterministic behavior, but in a form that is far easier to "plug in" to the nervous system than silicon. Naturally, they would also be excellent for interfacing instruments to nervous systems for research purposes.

Reply to This Parent

ReThe strength of neurons Score3, Informative
by dragonsflight on Sunday August 26, 0534AM 2217803
User 515217 Info httpbounce.toBobby
Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

It's not that simple. Basic nueroscience of the poke and see what happens variety recognizes that the brain is composed of many massively interconnected functional groups. In everyone the centers for speech, math, motor skills, etc. are roughly located in the same places. Yes nature can compensate for damage in some cases, but retraining parts to do other work is slower and often less effective than the original

People and animals are genetically coded to design brains in certain ways. Merely having lots of nuerons doesn't guarantee intelligence or functionality. A lot of it has to do with where inputs come in and where the outputs go out and how the groups are connected along the way. Also there are different types of nuerons with different nuerotransmitters and degrees of interconnectedness.

That said, yes the nuerons to some degree govern themselves. An architechture is built up and then nuerons respond in complicated and individual ways to some, as yet poorly understood, system for learning and development. If the brain really is all there is to intelligence than memory and learning have to be a product of something the nuerons are doing. Unless there is some uber mechanism directing all the nuerons, then learning has to be a natural result of what nuerons. Crudely put this might be divided into two categories as we understand it today

Nuerons like to fire in the same patterns they've seen before.
Nuerons like to make new connections.
Thoughts, especially memories, aren't random, they are similar to thoughts that have occured before. Roughly speaking it appears that the brain likes doing things it has done before, and thus learning. One way this is accomplished is by strengthening connections between nerves that have fired together in the past and weakening ones that don't often fire together.

The second thing is that nerves do like to grow. Not so much that it makes the brain random or chaotic, but enough to allow new patterns to be formed and improve on existing ones for instance shortening the number of nuerons a common path goes through.

No one really understands how it all interacts, or how the features of nuerons relate to our preferences for certain outcomes over others e.g. what in the brains causes pleasures to be reinforced and painful experiences to be avoided. This is however a good first step at being able to study nueronal circuitry in a highly controlled way.

Besides if you really expect functional "squishy" computers than something has to provide the initial framework that genetics and evolution has arranged in the animal kingdom. Build some nueron groups in meaningful ways, provide some mechanism for learning in an inputoutput environment perhaps similar to how people try to train nueral computer networks, and then remove the restrictions on growth and connectedness and let the structures optimize and develop themselves.

Reply to This Parent

ReThe strength of neurons Score2
by plastik55 INOSPAMread.repliesto.myREMOVEposts.edu on Sunday August 26, 0635AM 2217855
User 218435 Info
IAANS I am a neuroscientist.
I think the best immediate application for this kind of technology is not in constructign useful biological circuits, but in doing basic research on the properties of the nerve cells themselves. Traditionally, most of our knowledge about how nerve cells operate has come from studies of single cells in isolation, and in vitro recording. Neither of these techniques give very much information about the mechanisms which govern interaction between neurons, especially in the ways that their growth and behavior is influenced by neighboring cells. A technique which allows us to control the growth of a nerve culture would be a great tool for studying those interactions, becaue you would be able to more tightly control the interactions present as opposed to blindly jamming electrodes into brains and trying to infer circuits and connections from correlations in firing patterns, which is more or less the standard technique.

Koch in Biophysics of Computation showed that given what we know about neurons, they can theoretically implement equivalents of addition, multiplication, feedback, and many other computations, all within a single cell! The range of possibilities is enourmous, and requires a controlled environment to study the different tyeps of interactions. This could be a very important tool for research.
Haha! Easy

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oops Score2
by plastik55 INOSPAMread.repliesto.myREMOVEposts.edu on Sunday August 26, 0646AM 2217865
User 218435 Info
sin vitroin vivo above. That is, electrodes in living animals. There has been some work on trying to study networks in vitro as well i.e., in an artificial cell culture grown on an electrode array, but it's quite difficultgood electrodes are hard to make small enough, and even on the best electrode arrays you have to rely on luck to provide you with cells that wind up close enough to the electrodes to provide a good signal, and you wtill have very little idea about how the cells are connected. Another problem is the neurons will tend to move around a bit, so it's hard to track changes over time in such a culture. These problems could also be helped by this technique, by controlling the growth of interconnections and keeping the cells happy in one place.
Haha! Easy
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Nun attacked by pitbulls in schoolyard Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0414AM 2217714

By Susan Snyder and Monica Rhor , INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

A Roman Catholic nun from Incarnation School in Olney was attacked by two pit bulls while walking the convent's dog in the school yard yesterday.

When Sister Barbara Koehler saw the two pit bulls lunge for the Jack Russell terrier, her first move was to rescue the terrified dog.

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Neuron Lithography Technique
Posted by michael on Sunday August 26, 0351AM
from the brain2.0 dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes "EE Times has an article about a new technique to build customdesigned networks from biological neurons using chip lithography and polymers to steer the growth of the neurons . Some of the first computers were described as "electronic brains" to the unwashed masses will researchers have to describe these as "biological computers"?"
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Neuron Lithography Technique Preferences Top 105 comments Search Discussion
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i got th Score1
by insomniac on Sunday August 26, 0351AM 2217683
User 33758 Info
efirst o0st
insomniac
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Rei got th Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0521AM 2217786
I woulda had first post but i was to busy burning this RTM copy of WinXP Pro...

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Rei got th Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0618AM 2217843
8====D my cock

o your poop chute

drip drip

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Good GOD... Score2
by Soko NOrsokoloski1SPhome.AMcom on Sunday August 26, 0356AM 2217688
User 17987 Info httpmembers.home.netrsokoloski1
People call me a Chiphead now. With this, I'm really fscked.

Soko
What the hell, it's only Karma.
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ReGood GOD... Score2
by ElJefe on Sunday August 26, 0510AM 2217769
User 41718 Info httpazureforest.caltech.edu

People call me a Chiphead now.
Maybe you should take the Pringles out of your ears. Just a suggestion...

Chris

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2nd? Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0356AM 2217689
Yup

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neurolithography is antiquated! Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0357AM 2217691
but let me suggest this is post is FAST. In fact its so god damn FAST it would make Keanu Reeves head spin !

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Second post Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0358AM 2217694
sp!

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hmmm Score1
by jupiter$spectre on Sunday August 26, 0400AM 2217698
User 444183 Info
and in the neverending quest for an artificially created brain, scientists are now making circuits out of brain cells! woohoo!
um, no.
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Hey... Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0401AM 2217699
Why don't you go fucking get a motherfucking life you god damned jew?

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the Jews are the problem Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0543AM 2217816
Jews really suck. Jews really suck.
I don't like Jews 206.244.69.51.

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Heh.. Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0406AM 2217702
ThinkGeek SUCKS! Fuck them!

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ReHeh.. Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0432AM 2217730
yup, thinkgeek is cheesy.

copyleft copyleft.net is way better.

But since it doens't have a giant but failing fast corporation like VA Linux behind it to waste cash on banner ads all over the place no one knows about it.

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Stop it! Stop whining! Score2, Funny
by Anonymous DWord on Sunday August 26, 0409AM 2217706
User 466154 Info
My CPU is a neural net processor a learning computer.

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ReStop it! Stop whining! Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0455AM 2217756
I'm a cop you idiot!

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shut up Score1, Troll
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0411AM 2217708
what a load of bunk. this is all falsifalities and untruthified bunk. i'd prove it, but it's not even worth it, because you are all too stupid to understand anyways. ignorant snotballs, you can install mandrake and you think you are god. the last thing i want to hear is your bitching, so get the hell out of here you worthless pile of mentally retarded spooge.

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Reshut up Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0413AM 2217712
What? That makes little or no sense. Trolls don't even have any substance anymore. What a sad day this is for Slashdot.org. Hey, where's the asciiart guy? That stuff is teh win

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ASCII art Score0
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0555AM 2217827
They deleted my "shovelbird" post...

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The strength of neurons Score3, Insightful
by Glowing Fish mnoelharrisonmapsursine.dyndns.org on Sunday August 26, 0413AM 2217713
User 155236 Info httpursine.dyndns.org~mnoelharris
While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it, artificially causing neurons to grow rules out of one of their main strengths.

Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

If you are directing neurons into what direction they are growing totally, then what you have is a really squishy computer circuit.

Hopefully I didn't put any around my words...
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ReThe strength of neurons Score2
by James Lanfear on Sunday August 26, 0506AM 2217763
User 34124 Info
While this is an interesting development, and I can't begin to guess what is the future possibilities of it
There have been two potential applications I've seen mentioned.

Biosensors. This doesn't have much to do with neurons per se, but with having access to very good chemical sensors that can be interfaced to other equipment. Neurons fit these requirements, at least for a limited range of chemicals.
HumanMachine interfaces, and specifically, interfaces for prosthetics. The problems with the neurochips that you point out could work in their favor in this area you could have relatively controlled, deterministic behavior, but in a form that is far easier to "plug in" to the nervous system than silicon. Naturally, they would also be excellent for interfacing instruments to nervous systems for research purposes.

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ReThe strength of neurons Score3, Informative
by dragonsflight on Sunday August 26, 0534AM 2217803
User 515217 Info httpbounce.toBobby
Neurons get to make their own decision on how to grow, taking into account factors such as present of growth inducing hormones, and how much a connection a neuron makes is used. But still, to a great extant, neurons get to make their own decisions about how much and in what direction they get to grow.

It's not that simple. Basic nueroscience of the poke and see what happens variety recognizes that the brain is composed of many massively interconnected functional groups. In everyone the centers for speech, math, motor skills, etc. are roughly located in the same places. Yes nature can compensate for damage in some cases, but retraining parts to do other work is slower and often less effective than the original

People and animals are genetically coded to design brains in certain ways. Merely having lots of nuerons doesn't guarantee intelligence or functionality. A lot of it has to do with where inputs come in and where the outputs go out and how the groups are connected along the way. Also there are different types of nuerons with different nuerotransmitters and degrees of interconnectedness.

That said, yes the nuerons to some degree govern themselves. An architechture is built up and then nuerons respond in complicated and individual ways to some, as yet poorly understood, system for learning and development. If the brain really is all there is to intelligence than memory and learning have to be a product of something the nuerons are doing. Unless there is some uber mechanism directing all the nuerons, then learning has to be a natural result of what nuerons. Crudely put this might be divided into two categories as we understand it today

Nuerons like to fire in the same patterns they've seen before.
Nuerons like to make new connections.
Thoughts, especially memories, aren't random, they are similar to thoughts that have occured before. Roughly speaking it appears that the brain likes doing things it has done before, and thus learning. One way this is accomplished is by strengthening connections between nerves that have fired together in the past and weakening ones that don't often fire together.

The second thing is that nerves do like to grow. Not so much that it makes the brain random or chaotic, but enough to allow new patterns to be formed and improve on existing ones for instance shortening the number of nuerons a common path goes through.

No one really understands how it all interacts, or how the features of nuerons relate to our preferences for certain outcomes over others e.g. what in the brains causes pleasures to be reinforced and painful experiences to be avoided. This is however a good first step at being able to study nueronal circuitry in a highly controlled way.

Besides if you really expect functional "squishy" computers than something has to provide the initial framework that genetics and evolution has arranged in the animal kingdom. Build some nueron groups in meaningful ways, provide some mechanism for learning in an inputoutput environment perhaps similar to how people try to train nueral computer networks, and then remove the restrictions on growth and connectedness and let the structures optimize and develop themselves.

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ReThe strength of neurons Score2
by plastik55 INOSPAMread.repliesto.myREMOVEposts.edu on Sunday August 26, 0635AM 2217855
User 218435 Info
IAANS I am a neuroscientist.
I think the best immediate application for this kind of technology is not in constructign useful biological circuits, but in doing basic research on the properties of the nerve cells themselves. Traditionally, most of our knowledge about how nerve cells operate has come from studies of single cells in isolation, and in vitro recording. Neither of these techniques give very much information about the mechanisms which govern interaction between neurons, especially in the ways that their growth and behavior is influenced by neighboring cells. A technique which allows us to control the growth of a nerve culture would be a great tool for studying those interactions, becaue you would be able to more tightly control the interactions present as opposed to blindly jamming electrodes into brains and trying to infer circuits and connections from correlations in firing patterns, which is more or less the standard technique.

Koch in Biophysics of Computation showed that given what we know about neurons, they can theoretically implement equivalents of addition, multiplication, feedback, and many other computations, all within a single cell! The range of possibilities is enourmous, and requires a controlled environment to study the different tyeps of interactions. This could be a very important tool for research.
Haha! Easy

Reply to This Parent

oops Score2
by plastik55 INOSPAMread.repliesto.myREMOVEposts.edu on Sunday August 26, 0646AM 2217865
User 218435 Info
sin vitroin vivo above. That is, electrodes in living animals. There has been some work on trying to study networks in vitro as well i.e., in an artificial cell culture grown on an electrode array, but it's quite difficultgood electrodes are hard to make small enough, and even on the best electrode arrays you have to rely on luck to provide you with cells that wind up close enough to the electrodes to provide a good signal, and you wtill have very little idea about how the cells are connected. Another problem is the neurons will tend to move around a bit, so it's hard to track changes over time in such a culture. These problems could also be helped by this technique, by controlling the growth of interconnections and keeping the cells happy in one place.
Haha! Easy
Reply to This Parent

Nun attacked by pitbulls in schoolyard Score1, Offtopic
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26, 0414AM 2217714

By Susan Snyder and Monica Rhor , INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

A Roman Catholic nun from Incarnation School in Olney was attacked by two pit bulls while walking the convent's dog in the school yard yesterday.

When Sister Barbara Koehler saw the two pit bulls lunge for the Jack Russell terrier, her first move was to rescue the terrified dog.

Busted for Crapfloodin: iamklerck account#: 445579

[Anonymous Coward]

look at that post, this fucker pasted his own user id and account number into his crapflood. Mod his ass to oblivion on future posts.

...

[meggito]

This seems to be another step into an inherently bad direction. Are we ready for computers that grow and think on their own. We're playing god to atheist beings.

URL of Research Group

[favalora]

The EE Times article mentioned that a lot of the work is coming from Bruce Wheeler's research group. This is the home page:

http://soma.npa.uiuc.edu/labs/wheeler/home.html

And click on "featured work."

Also, if you're an electrical engineer you might be interested in "neuromorphic engineering," in which circuitry is designed with biological inspiration. A few places to check out are:

Caltech Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering

Telluride Workshop on Neuromorphic Engineering

And this Introduction to Computational Neuroscience

- Gregg Favalora -

not much of a technological breakthrough...

[mr.fr0g]

well...its fantastic that they are attempting to use neurons to bring into existence a new form of computing.
The technique they're using to bring about these results, however, was pioneered by the brothers Vacanti, as you can see in a recent story covered by discover magazine.

1. http://www.discover.com/july_01/featbros.html

Although I retain some measure of hope that this endeavour will meet success, it is of note that the scientists originally turned to stem cell research primarily because more conventional cells die quickly.
Thus, i am not exactly encouraged by the fact that they need to be propped up by artificial means to survive for sufficiently long periods of time.

Ref to actual paper?

[Alik]

Out of curiousity, any of the readers have a reference to the actual journal article? (I'm assuming they published this *somewhere* and didn't just send out a press release.) I'm aware of previous results with neurons and polylysine, so I'd like to take a look and see precisely what the innovation is here. (My guess is that it's the microprinting.)

A couple of thoughts

[Alan]

The first would be that users don't "install" the software that does the link spamming. This is done by other software, eg: Kaz-whatever. It's done secretly because IMHO no one would willingly say "yes, install this on my system" if they knew what it actually was. So IMHO it's basically the same as a trogan or a virus (and should be included in the virus updates from anti-virus makers).

The second would be that maybe this is where Mozilla/Netscape and/or other browsers suddenly get their chance back. Since they are not so closely tied to the OS, and are not as popular, they don't get this sort of stuff. Same with Linux. I've been surfing with galeon for ages and have never had to worry about smart-tags, spyware, or anything like that. Because of the fact that IE is everywhere, included free with every copy, it's so much of a more attractive target for these "virus" makers. Solution (well, a temporary one until we can go to these guys houses and pistol whip them into submission): use a different browser.

My $0.02

Applied to the Internet?

[mmol_6453]

This is fascinating...
It makes me wonder what would happen if a similar connection-reinforcement algorithm were applied to the Internet.

You could lay ground wires, use encrypted radio relay(HAM, anyone?), or satellite bouncing, all dependant on which would be the most cost-effective for the connection.

It wouldn't even have to be prohibitively expensive. All you need is the initial traffic tracing data, and you can start encouraging various ISPs to have direct links to each other, whether it be through a PRI or whatever. After the Internet speeds up noticably, it may even become the "in" thing to advertise that, for publicity. (We help make the Internet work!") (Yes, I know Cisco has a similar slogan.)

I can already give a good example where this would be useful: Packets between me and the local college currently travel via Chicago, and sometimes even California. Clearly, there is room for optimizations.

And people say the Internet is a living, breathing thing now.

A new beginning

[SmilingToad]

To me, the arrival of this technology is not surprising. A true marriage of biology and technology is inevitable. The universe is arguably a single machine, and every particle within it has been working in concert since its "creation." We cannot deny this cosmic collectivism. The fusion of living cells and chips is a logical progression in the evolution of our planet - there may be cultures in the universe which have long since mastered this concept. Once we have mastered this concept and are able to fully implement its every use and variaton, how much further down the road can a viable unified field theory be. Then again, maybe we are all just drones carrying out the will of the Empire of the Atoms. At least that's what the toaster has been whispering to me every morning for the last two months.

this is largely old news

[mj6798]

People at Caltech were publishing papers on this sort of thing more than 15 years ago. The main thing that may be new this time around is the means by which the patterns themselves are deposited. However, I don't think that has been the limiting factor in applying these techniques in the past.

rejected

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, I already submitted this EE Times story and had it rejected.

2001-08-22 18:22:08 Brains on a Chip (articles,news) (rejected)

I wonder why I bother....

Bioneural glepacks - here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Title says it all

man...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!

eXistenZ

[Anonymous Coward]

just don't let your pod get diseased