Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip

[katty]

more at: http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060327_neuro_chips.html

Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 27 March 2006
11:36 am ET


The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. That is scary.

[Lindacooks]

15. That's not scary, it's cool.

And if it can be someday used to treat neurological disorders, it's effing fantastic.

[Xeric]

2. A Borg chip

Soon we'll be able to create the perfect freeper.

[Uncle Joe]

8. Resistance is futile. n/t

[thefloyd]

3. As long as science

stays away from human animal hybrids!!

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Unlike Bush, then...

His brain is fused with a cow chip.

[InternalDialogue]

5. But it lends itself to product endorsements:

Who doesn't love chips and dip?

[Gman]

7. Funny, I thought it was a horse's ass

[yurbud]

10. cow chip, that's funny. I thought you were going to say...

it didn't even fuse with itself.

[rurallib]

6. A few months ago Discover had a story of transmitters

buried deep into the brains of some very severe mental patients. Let's see if I can find it. Anyway, we are at another era of sci-fi meets reality. Sorry, just realized I don't have time. Gotta go to a meeting.

[yurbud]

11. they already have used them to remote control rats and

navy wants remote control sharks.

[Ben Ceremos]

12. At Emory University (teaching hospital),

there is a man who has no use of his limbs. He is a volunteer for a program known as "cursor cortex study". The patient/volunteer has been linked cerebrally to a computer that he controls by use of an optical link. He is now at the stage where he can control the position of the cursor using only neuronal processes, ie; without use of his eyes as "fingers". I doubt we need to fear this development anymore than we fear crutches, CAT scans or stem-cell research. It is just another prosthetic device/technology. Ultimately, as the Emory study shows, the body itself is a prosthesis, so to speak.
What makes us "human" is situated in the body-consciousness, and open heart surgery, cerebral surgery and organ transplants (including prosthetics)are pretty convincing examples that a human is more than the sum of its parts.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bracy/brain/

(old link from orig. study) http://www.whsc.emory.edu/_releases/1998october/101398bakay.html

http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309089875/html/173.html

Peace

[yurbud]

14. no technology is inherently good or evil, it's just what you do with it

[shrike]

16. That was my first thought, too

Why not help those with spinal cord injuries, neurological illnesses, etc.? Very exciting development, IMO.

[Midnight Rambler]

9. Somebody alert KO on this.

I'm sure he'll wanna be the first to greet our new cyborg overlords.

[Skittles]

13. I Robot

"the story of the rise of the machine and the decline of man...and a warning that his brief dominance of this planet will probably end, because man tried to create robot in his own image."