The brain is without a doubt the most complex organ in the human body, and that is why creating a synthetic natural brain is a very difficult task. But it appears like scientists are getting closer and closer to completing the task of making a machine that behaves like a natural brain. Scientists involved in the BrainScaleS project, a collaboration between 15 research institutions, are trying to create hardware which emulates parts of a natural brain.

According to senior researcher Dr. Johannes Schemmel, “Our goal is to create a working system that will be located in Heidelberg, but accessible online to scientists all over the world”.

Their aim is to construct “neuromorphic hardware” or electronic systems that will rely on transistors and microchips to recreate the behavior of synapses. Their first prototype is an 8 inch large wafer consisting of 51 million artificial synapses. Although that sounds big, it represents just a tiny fraction of a working brain.

The completed hardware is expected to be capable of re-creating neurological processes 10,000 times faster than those in a natural biological system. Schemmel says, “That means that if we want to study a behaviour [in the nervous system] that would take a few minutes in the real biology, it will only take us split seconds”.

But the only problem is that hardware is not as flexible as biology. As Schemmel said, “Come new fundamental findings from biologists, we might just have to change our hardware from scratch”. That’s where software is useful as it can be easily re-programmed. But Schemmel says, “Modeling is essential for neuroscience. If we don’t have models to reconstruct the performance of neurones and synapses, we will never understand how the brain works. We can’t just stuff all this into equations, the behaviour of each individual cell is far too complex for that”.

If the project is a success, we could see great developments in the field of robotics, medicine and neurology. And just in case you are wondering, there is less chance for synthetic brain equipped robots to take over the world.

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We’re getting that much closer to the merging of man with machine. Princeton University researcher Michael McAlpine has developed a technique wherein a graphene sensor can be attached to a human tooth, detecting bacteria in the area and sending that single to a wireless receiver.

Before you start reaching for your tinfoil hat, realize that this research is still quite early and even McAlpine himself isn’t sure what the ultimate commercial application will be. The demonstration is with a human tooth and it’s the first time that the sensor has been “interfaced directly with biological tissue,” but it could just as easily be applied to other surfaces too.

A silk-graphene “tattoo” is attached to the tooth and then it is rinsed with water to dissolve the silk support. The ultra-thin circuitry remains and it is then ammended with bifunctional peptides and naturally occurring antimicrobial proteins (AMPs). A small electric field is modulated in the presence of bacteria and an RFID reader can then pick up on these signals and the bacterial concentration can then be determined.

I imagine there are some interesting medical applications that could come out of this research, but as always, further study is required.

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We’re getting that much closer to the robot apocalypse. We already have computers beating us at trivia games. We already have robot flying machines that can act like a swarm. And now, we have computers that can read our minds, decipher our thoughts, and reconstruct them into comprehensible speech.

To be completely fair, the tech isn’t quite there yet, but they are making some monumental strides. The study was published in PLos Biology and it describes the initial steps made in converting brain activities into audio. The computer program effectively reads your brain waves, figures out what those waves mean, and plays it back as a sound.

“This is exciting in terms of the basic science of how the brain decodes what we hear,” said Robert Knight, a senior member of the team and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Potentially, the technique could be used to develop an implantable prosthetic device to aid speaking, and for some patients that would be wonderful. The next step is to test whether we can decode a word when a person imagines it. That might sound spooky, but this could really help patients. Perhaps in 10 years it will be as common as grandmother getting a new hip,” Knight said. 

The video on The Guardian illustrates some basic word recognition, but you can see how more advances would be able to take this concept to a much higher level. Forget about motion control and Kinect for Windows 8. We could have mind control for Windows 9. Who needs speech recognition when you can just think it instead?

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