Can we use neurons?

[Vertigon]

I was wondering if anyone has come across any credible information regarding a departure from silicon/transistors in the development of cpu's? Perhaps an ambitious research project somewhere in the world?

 

[Mathos]

referring to the subject line, I'd say about half the people on this forum can't use their neurons.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

LOL

 

[thematrixhazuneo]

There is a good book that I recommend reading called Visions by Michio Kaku, He talks about such topics and other avenues. He also wrote Hyperspace.

 

[rayzor]

There is a good book that I recommend reading called Visions by Michio Kaku, He talks about such topics and other avenues. He also wrote Hyperspace.

and (this is irrelevant) built his own 'atom smasher' in high school!!

 

[badgtx1969]

I have seen combinational approaches:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=step-toward-neuro-memory-chip
http://www.livescience.com/health/060327_neuro_chips.html

Most envision the addition of cells as biosensors for quick detection of compounds.

I don't think we will see a pure living chip that can out perform a solid state chip, due to size constraints. A neuron can be 10's of microns in size, and is axons maybe down to 100's of nm. Then there are the problems of providing the proper culture/living conditions.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

I think a chemical/electric comunication is more diverse, but how one would get the most out of that is really the question

 

[SpinachEater]

This is probably way over anyone's head but is really cool when looking at neurons and how they signal.

Neurons use a process called saltatory conduction to speed up signaling. There are insulating coatings called mylen sheaths, which are made up of mainly of fat, that run down the length of the axon. The sheaths create nodes (see the picture in this wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwann_cell) along the axon surface. The electrical signal jumps from node to node instead of traveling down the entire axon. This node to node behavior speeds up signaling tremendously opposed to traveling down the entire axon. Lack of saltatory conduction is actually the cause of MS. The mylen sheaths degrade and force signals to travel down the entire axon and considerably slows down signaling.

With the use of nanotechnology / nanobiology, it would be interesting to see if saltatory conduction could be mimicked and applied to current technology to speed up signaling. Imagine a wire that was a synthetic axon with mylen-like sheaths that forced electrons to travel faster via nodes rather than down the entire length of the wire. Faster signals and less heat is always a good thing. Someone should get on that. [:wr2]

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I think the best option might be to copy some of the abilities of neurons, but as far as building a processor out of them it seems like it would be the wrong option.

 

[randomizer]

Why would you want to when you can exploit quantum mechanics instead?

 

[SpinachEater]

nanophotonics

 

[randomizer]

My brain is too fast, it will fry any computer system.

 

[Ibanezrg570]

Who knows? Maybe we will have Flux-capacitors in our PC's soon that run on old banana peels and beer. But we might need some of that nano tech in order to produce the 1.21 Jigawatts without mounting the PC on a Delorean and affixing a lighting rod to it.


By the way, where is Biff now anyways?

 

[rodney_ws]

Neu-what?

 

[sportsfanboy]

When you crazy mofo's create skynet, I'm gonna kick your arses

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

The beast, and the image of the beast

 

[imrul]

sun microsystems is trying lasers. to badgtx1969: neurons are less than 20 nm. maybe you can use atomic or sub-atomic level precision for this and get almost the speed of light. -or if you use charged photons instead of transistors, the information would travel at the speed of light.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

I can see it now, " My rig is sloooow" Answer: Have you fed your processor? Or, "Cant wait for my dual purpose water cooling/ processor feeding unit to come in from the egg"

 

[surrealdeal]

hahaha. screw wiki. They have been successful in building logic gates with neurons, however, it's quite hard to get them to grow that way. So there will be scalability issues. Not to mention that nobody knows how to program them properly, or that neurons' axio-dendrite interface is way too analog to encode anything. Oh, and don't forget to install the latest microsoft patches with your handy dandy icepick.

 

[spoonboy]

referring to the subject line, I'd say about half the people on this forum can't use their neurons.

bingo!

 

[jimmysmitty]

Hmmm. Lets see. Bio computers. Fun times. Next thing you know there will be premium computer food that you feed for better performance. No more heat really. I would be using more of a Miracle Grow plant stick for my MS updates. Seems more appropriate. Then it dies when I go on vacation.

 

[sailer]

Lack of saltatory conduction is actually the cause of MS. The mylen sheaths degrade and force signals to travel down the entire axon and considerably slows down signaling.

You got that almost right, but you missed. The cause of MS is a presumed to be a virus that infects and makes a T cell rearrangement. These modified T-cells in turn falsely identify the myelin sheath as a foreign body and they attack it, thus exposing the nerve itself, which they then attack as well. Depending on the ferocity of the attack, the nerve may be damaged, thus causing only partital conduction through the axion, or it may be severed entirely. The lack of saltatory conduction is the result of the MS attack, not the cause of it. There's a lot more resaerch going on into the causes and treatments of MS, but so far its remained elusive as far as the actual original cause and thus treatment and either a cure or a vacination remain in the future.

I know a fair amount about MS, as I've had it since 1970, am a member of the NARCOMS research team, and am a doctor, or rather a retired doctor, as the effects of MS long ago ended my career.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Sailor, is folding doing anything towards MS?

 

[sailer]

Folding is running a lot of simulations, but the real problem is going through the live patient trials and separating the stuff that works from the stuff that gives a placebo effect. Over 90% of what is tried doesn't make it through live trials for one reason or another. I took some liver damage myself a couple years back from a new drug. The best I know, some, possibly most, of the Folding concentrates on DNA analysis and trying to separate the exact genes involved in MS, verses random defects. One of the things that has been found is that there are a number of subtypes of MS, which is impeding a specific vacination. Things are far better now than they were 30 years ago, and I think that Folding has been helping a lot. If nothing else, it helps keep us from persueing wrong leads.

 

[SpinachEater]

The lack of saltatory conduction is the result of the MS attack, not the cause of it.

Absolutely correct, thanks for catching that. I misspoke by saying cause of MS. I meant the cause of the symptoms associated with MS but in my attempt to oversimplify, I got careless.

I am sorry to hear that it has affected your career in such a way. Hopefully your contributions to the research group will help lead to future treatments and preventions.