Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Couple Nerve Tissues With Computer Chip
patiwat writes "Recalling Ghost in the Shell, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried have coupled living brain tissue to a semiconductor chip. This technique involves culturing razor-thin slices of the hippocampus region on the chip, enabling them to record neural communication between thousands of nerve cells in the brain tissue slice. The hippocampus is associated with temporary storage of memory. Employing the new technique, the scientists working under the direction of Peter Fromherz were able to visualize the influence of pharmaceutical compounds on the neural network, making the 'brainchip' an exciting test bed for neuropharmaceutical research, with potential for further development in neurochip prosthetics and neurocomputation. The researchers reported this news in the online edition of the Journal of Neurophysiology (May 10, 2006)."
How long till neural joint for 100% immersive all-senses VR?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Nice, but does the chip run linux ? Would it if the slices were taken from a penguin ?
Anyway I for one welcome our living hyppocampus-sliced brainchip overlords.
I work in neuroscience, and Fromherz has been doing this for a long time:
A neuron-silicon junction: a Retzius cell of the leech on an insulated-gate field-effect transistor.
Science. 1991 May 31;252(5010):1290-3.
pdf
All the same, it is an interesting field, but don't let this post lead you to believe that he (and others) haven't already been doing this for 15 years.
Hooray! Now there seems a real chance that one day doctors will be able to graft one of those whatsits onto the prefrontal thingey and cure my attention something something disorder!
Resistance is futile!
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
I don think this will lead to major changes in the computer technology in near future. But, of course it is a huge progress, especially if it can by uesfull for something. Even, i dont think that on this level it can
This is cool. There are computer simulated neurons, hardware implemented simulated neurons, and now we have real neurons on a computer chip! :D Cool.
How do they keep the cells alive?.. The silicon must be exposed. Here comes AI & math processor brain implant.
On another note, computer simulated neurons are great at recognising patterns and solving problems. Most character recognition software was based on neuron fuzzy logic
No, really, I do. Isn't technology great?
Whooooaa !
To hook up to a quantum computer cluster. That's all I really want before I die... hopefully before we create an artificial intelligence. I don't feel particularly good about combining AI and quantum computing, as it'll likely mean either a sudden massive jump or complete extinction for human civilization, whichever might be more convenient for that manner of entity. Eh. :)
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Brained my damage...
So if one grafts hippocampus tissue into a solid state memory chip, will it help Alzheimer's patients retain some information? Even if such a thing is possible, I wonder how far to go before practical implementation.
I'll read TFA in detail tomorrow...
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
makes for good eatin too!
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
Orbiting brain lasers...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I always worry when these kinds of press releases come out. They always overdo it and spoil the impact.
True, it is a significant step in terms of scale and they way they have overcome the interfacing problems *and* maintain the culture medium is pretty snazzy. But...
Exciting testbed for pharmaceutical research? Nah!
Setting aside the fact that it's not human tissue; the interactions between neurons is massively complex. The culture medium (which keeps the cells alive) is, by necessity not anything like the infrastructure which keeps the cells alive in a living organism, so it will interfere with many of the more subtle interactions. And those subtle interactions make all the difference when it comes to developing drugs.
It's still interesting and a good step in the right direction but they overhyped it. Someone is looking for more grant money.
Disclaimer: Yes, I *am* a biochemist.
I'm really clumsy, and I've being doing this accidentally for years. Barely a month goes by before I trip over a stray power chord and have motherboards protruding from my forehead.
Unfortunately, I've never persevered long enough with the addition to see if any fusing occurs, though I have a feeling that there wouldn't be too much improvement due to the inherent sluggishness of my general brain design, causing any information passed from silicon to brain to be so slow as to make any improvement virtually unnoticeable.
I think I probably need to get a faster bus speed, maybe the 42 would be a better choice.
That was the most incredible project I heard from about neurotechnology in the past years. Here is the link in french and english to that lab :
http://www.polystim.ca/
For(k;;)(Fork();)
We're gonna be Cybermen in a few hundred years I guess...
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
It wants feet.
Dr. Sam Beckett did this back in 1996. He used these circuits to create a senient computer named Ziggy, who in turn helped him design a time travel machine.
Then:
Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator - and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that are not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on his journey is Al, an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hopin g each time that his next leap will be the leap home.
Hopefully, before he gets home, he'll leap into someone around my teenaged self and teach him/me about girls, and then I'll never have been able to type that from memory.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Standards in Artificial Intelligence include hybrids of neural biology and computer hardware -- where neuro-chips integrate neuronal tissue with a silicon surface.
Our Neurofuture ranges now from enhancement of the human brain-mind to a Vulcan mind-meld of brain and machine.
A Theory of Cognitivity explains how to build the artificial minds of the future -- whether housed in computers or in these new hybrids of chip and nerve-cell.
Primitive AI Engines already exist and need only rapid prototyping along multiple development paths in the race towards True AI and superintelligent AI (SAI).
Expect an AI Landrush to start in the year 2007.
Human-Level AI should be here by 2009.
A Joint Stewardship of Earth under human and cyborg control will render the legal definition of person meaningless, as the citizens of society range from flesh-and-blood humans through all mannner of neurocomputational hybrids to full-metal robots.
The Singularity Timetable predicts a Technological Singularity by the end time of the ancient Mayan calendar in 2012 -- only six neurochip years from now.
There's a photograph of an NN - Silicon connector on the first 2 pages of Ghost in the Shell manga. Apparently the photo inspired Shirow :-)
I, for one, welcome our new cyborg overlords....
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Brain slice experiments (this case is just in conjunction with this new chip that can measure various impulses from cultured hippocampal slice) scare the hell out of me. A brain we know already has capability at least in full to present a rich sensory representation. When we get better at using brain slices in neurocomputation or experiments (cultured, donated, harvested, ...) then a line has been crossed until we know enough to know better. Who'd donate their brain if they knew some aspect of 'themselves' might be preserved while experiments were performed on it? Especially since the brain's owner is not in any condition to back out of the experiment at that point.
A brain slice is functionally inferior subset of this full brain's capability. How small a slice should it be before all sentience is lost and therefore ok to put it on a chip? Should it be for volunteers only? Are cultured samples ok to use or perhaps brain properties make them generate sensory representation just as well? Is it for example to use neural gag reflex circuitry to instead move our robotic arm and a neural 'gut punch' to alter the speed and trajectory? Repeated hundreds of times an hour? For decades on end? Is this kind of thing ok to do to animal brains / slices over a long period of time? Anyway, all I know is when I talk like this I'm modded into the subzero territories, so cheers to the few that see it!
Now I can find out what I was *really* thinking when I bought that El Camino on Ebay!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages; all alike.
I don't think this product will be viable in the future. Imagine if this became ubiquitous and someone launched an EMP in New York City?
"I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen."
--Commissioner Pravin Lal
"Man and Machine"
are you using a polymer-based neuro-relay to transit the organic nerve impulses to the central processor of my positronic net? If that is the case, how have you solved the problem of increased signal degradation inherent to organo-synthetic transmission across...
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Do you realize how good this is? We can move away from blowing buildings up in wars and we can just EMP each other!
Not to mention... guns... that's old news...Tasers? invest in Taser companies!
Cooooool.
welcome our new Cyborg overlords.
Grammar Nazi
The above post is NOT offtopic. Looking at this guy's posting history, you can see this is the first time he's been moded. This guy is now doomed to post in the zero range unless someone decides to mod him back up. If you agree that this mod is unfair, please spend one of your points on the parent post.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
ves. I have MS and it attacked my optic nerves really bad. I anm totally blind in the left eye and hahe a 30 30% or so field in my right. I am hopefull that since I have seen befor that they can implant a camera and wire it in to my brain so I can see out of that eye again. I have heard they have done this to a man in Canada and he was able to drive.
In other news, the institute has created a for-profit spinoff with the strange name SkyNet.
E = m * c^(Hammer)
Well actually, it started when I first started seeing city-wide wireless internet, and then Rhode Island wants state-wide wireless...
Anyway, I wholeheartedly recommend every single person that reads this to read GitS (if you haven't already). It not only shows where exactly the world will be in a few years, but also give a good idea as to the risks of humans having pooters implanted into their brains with connection to the webbernets (brain and personality hacks, whee!). Or Hell, watch Stand Alone Complex, it's the manga put on TV.
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
While this subject has long been a staple in science fiction (George Alec Effinger's Moddies & Daddys spring to mind), the most recent time I read of this was also the closest to what this article is about: Interface, written by Neal Stephenson & his uncle, Frederick George, deals with a stroke victim who has circuitry embedded in his brain to help re-route past damaged cells.
As with any technology, quite fascinating, and scary!