There is a great fear of robots replacing humans. But maybe the machines should take care of us.
Swedish scientists have created the world’s first “living computer” that is made of human brain tissue.
It consists of 16 organoids, or clusters of brain cells, which have been grown in a laboratory and which send information to each other.
They work much like a traditional computer chip – sending and receiving signals through their neurons, which act as circuits.
But what makes them special is that a living machine consumes less energy, because living neurons can consume more than a million times less energy than the current digital processors in use today.
Compared to the world’s best computers, such as the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Frontier, the researchers found that for the same speed and 1,000 times more memory, the human brain uses 10 to 20 watts—compared to a computer using 21 megawatts.
One megawatt equals one million watts.
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The living machine was developed by scientists at FinalSparks, a company focused on creating solutions with biological neural networks.
Dr Fred Jordan, co-CEO of FinalSpark, a startup focused on creating solutions with biological neural networks, told DailyMail.com: “This The idea is common in science fiction, but there hasn’t been a lot of real research.”
Organoids are small, self-organized three-dimensional tissue cultures made from stem cells.
Such cultures can be engineered to replicate most of the organ’s complexity or to express select aspects of the organ, such as producing only certain cell types.
Scientists take the stem cells and culture them for about one month until they form structures like neurons.
The FinalSparks mini-brains were made from an estimated 10,000 live neurons about 0.5 mm in diameter.
The organoids are trained with doses of dopamine – when they perform tasks correctly, they receive a rush of the chemical as a reward.
The researchers administer dopamine by exposing a specific area of the brain organoid to light—much like it is released in the human brain when a certain area is activated.
The minibrains are surrounded by eight electrodes that measure activity in the organoids, and the researchers can send current through the electrode to affect the neuron.
These electrodes fulfill a dual role: they stimulate the organoids and record the data they process.
The organoids are also placed in a microfluidic incubator, which acts as a mini plumbing system for small amounts of fluid, providing nutrients to the cells and providing the nutrients necessary to keep them alive.
The incubator maintains organoids at body temperature and automates the flow and maintenance of cell media, providing a stable environment free of bacteria and viruses.
Cells in a “living computer” live and die within 100 days, clustered into a 3D organoid structure.
But they are similar to those in real human brains and have similar electrical activity.
“The neurons in your brain will live for about 80 years – you will have the same ones when you die as when you were born. We’re not as good as nature at keeping them alive, so they live 100 days.”
And scientists simply grow new organoids to replace the dead ones.
The team recently launched Brain Computer as an online platform allowing global researchers to remotely perform in vitro experiments on biological neurons.
Three dozen universities have already expressed interest in using the platform
Jordan described a “living computer” as “wetware” because—like the actual human brain—it is somewhere between computer hardware (i.e., the chips that process information) and software (the programs that run on the hardware).
“We call it ‘wetware’ — I don’t know who coined that word — but the brain is between the software and the hardware,” Jordan said.
“You have a clear separation in computers, you run different software on the same hardware.
But in our brain, to learn something, you have to physically change the hardware that makes the synaptic connections. So we need a new word and ‘wetware’ makes sense because cells need a wet environment to survive.’
The world is in the midst of an energy crisis due to fuel shortages, supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions and the transition to renewable energy sources.
Not to mention the rise of artificial intelligence, which is predicted to use 29.3 terawatt-hours per year – one terawatt equals one trillion watts.
what are the next steps?
Currently, the company is focusing on cloud computing, especially energy-intensive data centers that power artificial intelligence.
Labs and universities around the world are already connecting to FinalSpark to test hardware.
Later this month, the world’s first “biocomputing” conference will visit Jordan, which will be held in Vienna this month with visitors from Australia and the US: “I don’t think the organizers knew how few of us there were,” he laughed.
He said the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since publishing his findings: ‘A lot of people are calling me to offer me money,’ he said.
Another potential breakthrough is a new understanding of the human brain itself, which may lead to cures for diseases.
Organoid-making technology is relatively new, and the idea of turning human neurons into a computer has received little prior research.