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)."

cool stuff but not new

[frilledren]

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 [sciencemag.org]
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.

Re:artificial brains..

[Anonymous Coward]

if you had read the article carefully, you would notice they hadn't achieved bidirectional transmission between cells and transistors. the chip works in the same fashion as ccd does in your camera. the difference is that the first is responsive to charged particles and the latter to photons. so forget about ghost in the shell style ai. however it would be a great mistake to neglect the impact of this work on developement in neurophysiology.

Not *that* great for pharmaceutical research.

[Cicero382]

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.

Project for blind people

[alexandrecc]

In 1999, I heard of a biomedical engineering group in École Polytechnique de Montréal searching to use implantable chip devices in the visual occipital cortex. The chip is connected wirelessly to a camera system that is transmitting a vision input. That way the blind person can potentially see what is going on.

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/ [polystim.ca]