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Science

Nerve Cells Connected to Semi-Conductors 16

Posted by michael from the central-brain-unit dept.
pommaq writes: "Nature reports that some crafty scientists in Austin have soldered nerve cells to little semiconductors. The full story is here. Am I the only one thinking it'd be cool to control my keyboard with my mind?"
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Nerve Cells Connected to Semi-Conductors More

Nerve Cells Connected to Semi-Conductors

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  • Just think of the boon for the on-line porn industry. Heh. If this were a two-way communication, well, you know.
    • ...you'd have to give them your email address!
      In exchange for which they would send you a "free" do-yourself, er, I mean do-it-yourself kit.
      Shipped UPS of course. :)

  • Ouch. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rbeattie ( 43187 ) <russ@russellbeattie.com> on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @02:25PM (#2590791) Homepage

    Controlling my computer with my mind sounds pretty good, but soldering any of my nervecells sounds incredibly painful. Actually, any soldering of any part of my body just seems like a bad idea.

    It would be kinda cool if I lost my hand or something I could solder in a Palm Pilot, but still it just seems too borgish. Hmmm... but hey, soldering in my DreamCast game controller and now we're talking. Man, talk about reaction times on Soul Caliber...

    -Russ
    • Didn't they put an eel brain inside a little go cart like device already? The eel, which in real life oriented itself relative to light from above, followed light sources around inside its little go cart using its own brain to "control" the circuitry of the go cart. Maybe this is something different. eels have neurons that are much larger than human neurons. Maybe it is no trick to attach big neurons to electrical circuits. Anyone hear about the cyborg-eel?

  • Useful as biosensors (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m_evanchik ( 398143 ) <michel_evanchikATevanchik...net> on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @02:42PM (#2590973) Homepage
    This is sort of old news, as the article itself details, neurons and silicon have been linked before.

    The article also makes it fairly clear that from a computational point of view, protein has no clear benefits over silicon

    Where these silicon/protein hybrid circuits are potentially immediately useful, as outlined by the article, is in the fields of prosthetics and biosensors.

    A quick search on google for bioterrorism sensors gives one a pretty good idea of how much advances need to be made in this field.
    • A quick search on google for bioterrorism sensors gives one a pretty good idea of how much advances need to be made in this field.

      Not quite. Bioterrorism sensors detect chemicals, spores, and the like. Integrating neurons and silicon is more a matter of decoding the signals: translating from messy bioelectric signals into smooth artificial electronic ones and vice versa. Much work remains to be done in both areas, but it's not the same work.
    • right.

      but if you have an organic-type sensor, a neuron may be better as an interface than a silicon circuit.
  • I knew you could!

  • it's about time... (Score:3, Funny)

    by msouth ( 10321 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2001 @03:50PM (#2591551) Homepage Journal
    those blasted 'puters have been gettin on my nerves for ages! 'Bout time we got our nerves on them!

  • The toe cell's connected to the foot cell (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The retina's connected to the optic nerve.
    The optic nerve's connected to the brain cell.
    The brain cell's connected to the semiconductor.
    The semiconductor's connected to the wires.
    The wires' connected to the motherboard.
    The motherboard's connected to the video card.
    The video card's connected to the monitor.
    The monitor displays the image.
    The image is focused on the retina.

    Hear the word of the lord!
  • If you think that a computer problem can give you a headache now, just wait until your new Thinktronic crashes...
  • I was doing this in 1988 with chicken-embryo myoblasts and chips we had made in the MOSIS program.

    MOSIS was commercially donated semiconductor fab capacity normally used to fab circuits for student projects. We used it to make an array of open pads on which we placed the myoblasts (clumps of neural/muscular tissue that fired occasionally without being stimulated).

    The pads were connected to a multiplexer and an amplifier fabbed on the same chip.

    But we weren't the first to do that, just the first to use common silicon processes to do it. No patent for me.

    --Blair

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