«The program’s goal is to develop a brain-inspired bio-chip that will mimic the function, size, power and energy consumption of a biological cerebral cortex. If successful, the program will lay the foundations for functional machines that could enhance humans in many of the most demanding situations faced by today’s warriors, such as processing useful information and planning operations.» This declaration—or promise, or threat, take it as you wish—concerns the SyNAPSE program (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics), is from 2008, and comes from the infamous DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The program has continued to evolve since then, although the results have not been disclosed, nor whether they tend toward the brain of a primate, a reptile, or an amoeba. Be that as it may, for neuroscience “unlocking the mysteries” of the brain is a first-line endeavor. The objective is either to build a device that emulates cerebral function, or, conversely, to control the function of a living brain via electronic systems.
Australian researchers followed the second approach, announcing in early May that they had succeeded in developing brain cells embedded in a semiconductor. No, so far they have not managed to functionally connect the semiconductor with the cells, since after all what the bio-chip serves is the creation of an absolutely controlled environment inside which the cells will multiply and build synapses. Until now the problem was that under laboratory conditions it was impossible to achieve this high-order organization required for brain cells to develop. The result was that they did multiply and connect, but in a completely chaotic and incomprehensible way that had nothing to do with a living brain. In contrast, within the electronically controlled environment of the semiconductor, the cells (from a mouse brain) formed neurons with normal nerve endings, which in turn joined into synapses and indeed in a perfectly aligned and orderly grid.
In this way, the time-honored exhortation “when will you finally grow up!” will acquire a completely different meaning in the 21st century…
(In the photo, a 4×4 array of SyNAPSE microchips. Each chip has one million “neurons” with 256 million synapses between them.)
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