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Nerve Cells Successfully Grown on Silicon
crabpeople writes "Researchers at the University of Calgary have found that nerve cells grown on a microchip can learn and memorize information which can be communicated to the brain. 'We discovered that when we used the chip to stimulate the neurons, their synaptic strength was enhanced,' said Naweed Syed, a neurobiologist at the University of Calgary's faculty of medicine."
Not making faster Pentiums or Athlons. Sorry. Most of that magic has already been woven. Who out there is qualified to make systems level designs and decisions about bio computer systems? Think about the type of knowledge it must take about physics, electrical and computer engineering, as well as biological knowledge.
What type of magnetic and power restrictions will there be? Reliability? What type of optimizations will exist? Interfaces? Flexibility?
We're still quite far away from having things like this be applicable to modern day but think about when you too can say, "I know Kung Fu"!
Researchers at the University of Calgary have found that nerve cells grown on a microchip can learn and memorize information which can be communicated to the brain.
While the article mentions this in the introduction, it doesn't mention this happening at all in the research. It talks about neurons communicating with each other. This is a long way from connecting this chip into a living brain in an animal that can still function.
While I agree that this is a fascinating article, we should make sure not to sensationalize it too much. Making chips that interface with actual brains in actual animals, even if they are snails, is still a long way off.
"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
No it's not. This involves interfacing with the neurons that are already there.
As these true neural webs become more complicated, it would be interesting to see if any kind of emergent behavior was evident
Given that large collections of neurons are well known to exhibit emergent behaviour, I think it would be more interesting if they didn't.
this could be the first step to replicating a nervous system without having to rely on fetuses for stem cells. It requires no human cloning and holds immense promise
Nerve cells harvested from an animal brain can be grown in the lab. There is no need for embryonic stem cells or cloning at all. Growing them on silicon does not make this easier - in fact they will probably grown better in a petri dish.
It would definitely be cool to have a couple of these chips implanted to enhance the base memory that we are kitted with at birth
Memory in the brain is not simple storage of information. It is unlikely that pluggin a DRAM into your brain would be able to enhance your memory.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
How would that be any different than what we've had for the last 20 years?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Alan Cooper, author of "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" and other texts put it this way:
Q: What do you get when you cross a camera and a computer?
A: A computer.
His point is that from an interface and place-in-the-world point of view, most products that have been digitally enhanced tend to remain closer to their technology roots than their analog counterparts (with all of the usability, and I would say ethical, challenges inherient in a technologist-driven system).
That said, this is pretty frickin' cool, but the double-edged sword presented by this innovation seems both particularly sharp and far reaching. I really hope we get this one right.
"Why can't you use your powers for Good?"
Or, for a more software interpretation, it's a function that takes a bunch of boolean parameters and returns a boolean. Anyone who's ever done any programmation or computer architecture should see why you can easily process anything with this.