Working Nerve Chip

poetic writes: "Two scientists from Munich have succeeded in creating a nerve chip with silicon and snail nerves. The cells were hindered from growing away from the silicon with a plastic fence. They managed to get a signal to go from silicon through a neural circuit and back to the chip again. Cute, one step closer to a decent uplink! See the abstract at Nature's site."

Comments

An important step up

[Zergwyn]

Recently researchers successfully linked up a couple of leach neurons to silicon, but while the connections worked it was not an actual chip. This is a step up on the complexity scale.

Leach neurons and those of other critters are useful to experiment with because they are very large, especially in comparison to most mammals. This makes it much easier to connect them to electronics. It will probably be a while before we see anything with people, because the connections must be so tiny. It seems likely though that as nanotech and neuroscience advance, this field will become one of the hottest in science.

But the only problem is...

[Pig Hogger]

Two scientists from Munich have succeded in creating a nerve chip with silicon and snail nerves.

But the only problem is the slowness of the propagation.

Next year, they are going to try the same experiment with rabbit nerves, to see if there is a speed improvement.

Interesting focus....

[GreyPoopon]

I'm actually surprised at the fact that the article focused on prosthetic implants (ie into the brain) as one of the primary benefits of this technology. Many of us on /. followed with similar thoughts. However, I see other applications to be much closer on the horizon. While we have a long way to go before we can start wet-wiring silicon to our brains, I think we could use this technology for artificial limbs much sooner. Theoretically, it should be possible to build entirely eltromechanical limbs that have the ability to transmit feeling -- hot and cold, pressure, pain, etc. Being able to connect electronic sensors in these limbs to actual nerve tissue is the missing link. In cases where a limb truly could not be attached, this would be the next best option. Any speculation on how long it will be?