Scientists Couple Nerve Tissues With Computer Chip 92
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)."
Let's get a couple of jokes out of the way (Score:2, Funny)
Anyway I for one welcome our living hyppocampus-sliced brainchip overlords.
Repair my brain? (Score:5, Funny)
Resistance is futile!
Re:cool stuff but not new (Score:3, Funny)
I know what you're thinking... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Let's get a couple of jokes out of the way (Score:3, Funny)
Brains on a chip (Score:4, Funny)
makes for good eatin too!
Re:Let's get a couple of jokes out of the way (Score:2, Funny)
Rambling, rambling, rambling (Score:4, Funny)
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.
One of these things just called... (Score:2, Funny)
Hello... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Debug my brain! (Score:3, Funny)
Now I can find out what I was *really* thinking when I bought that El Camino on Ebay!