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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)."
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.
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!
Are you saying this isn't "Ghost In The Shell" post?
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
No, really, I do. Isn't technology great?
makes for good eatin too!
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
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.
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
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.