Scientists Create Logic Gates from Living Neurons | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Create Logic Gates from Living Neurons

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50 pointsamackera14 comments

Pretty cool, but before anyone starts talking about the coming age of bio computation, keep in mind neurons are a horribly inefficient way of carrying out this kind of computation.

This might lead to a deeper understanding of how neural nets work (or an easier way of implementing them in the hardware, as it were). If we can design regular logic in neurons, we can (eventually?) do some of the fancy neural nets, and then we have the basis of an actually useful breakthrough.

Cool stuff though.

If we can design regular logic in neurons, we can (eventually?) do some of the fancy neural nets

Well, yes, if you can make logic gates out of neurons you could eventually implement a neural network with actual neurons, but it would be little more than a perverse pun. Unless I'm missing your point...?

I was thinking something similar, that you are taking a complex biological computation device that has over 1000 synapses, each carrying some complex quantity of information, and reducing it to a bit. This is an inefficient use of a neuron.

You are quite correct; however, I think one interesting corollary to this research is the interface between brain and computer. Though we still require a method by which to translate brain function into Boolean-esque logic, at least when we figure that out we'll have a method to input that data into a computer (however inefficient that method may be).

Yes it does seem as if someone took some very complex transistors and used them as a knobs on an abacus.

The recent discovery that it may be possible for a single neuron to store a memory makes it all the more likely ( http://www.livescience.com/health/090125-memory-cell.html )

What's nice about this is that living cells can heal to an extent, which is more than we can say for silicon.

AFAIK living cells doesn't heal they auto-destruct and are replaced by new cells.

This requires one of those "yes and no" answers. Sometimes cells auto-destruct and are replaced by new cells. Other times, they heal. Both strategies can be useful, depending on the situation.

Very cool. Deeper info on project page:

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/EMoses/projects/NeuralDevi...

This shows an oscillator built of diodes. On to the Nature Physics article, now.

So would the barrier to making things like adders, latches, etc. (in other words, everything you need to build a Von Neumann computer) be that they don't have a way to make NOT gates? Or would making NOT gates out what they have not be a big deal?

Now, if they said they made living neurons (or models thereof) out of logic gates, it might even be useful.

I just want to see, oh, an 8-bit full adder. Not all that many gates and it can do real work.

I'd love a fully brain-implantable FPU.

I'm even willing to start thinking in stack notation!

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