Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have a chip made that a brain cell can simulate. The chip can handle an important phenomenon in which inter-connections between neurons to be modified.
With the chip can be a brain cell to be simulated by the activity in the synapses to simulate. In the synapse, signals are transmitted between two neurons, cells in the brain, exchanged with different chemical messengers. The simulation of this process is made difficult because the brain is plastic. That is to say that the connections that neurons connected with each other, which can be changed. The chip of MIT can handle this process, while approximately 400 transistors are needed for an individual synapse to mimic. This is to ensure that researchers in the coming years with the chip, more precisely, to investigate how brain cells communicate with each other.
The transistors in the chip to simulate ionkanelen, which in the cell can be used to ions in and out of the cell to transport. This process underlies the generation of an electric potential, which for the signal transmission to neighboring neurons. Because each individual transistor works as an analog signal, the chip will be better able to make a neuron, to simulate a conventional model, with binary on/off positions works.
A chip that a neuron can mimic, it would be in the future can be used to artificially life as possible, as reasoning, the MIT researchers. Because of the complexity of the brain is still not fully understood, this will, however, in the short term probably impossible. Also can the chips be used in so-called neuroprotheses, in which recording and simulation of breinsignalen among other things, for the control of artificial limbs. A similar concept was recently shown by American researchers.
Plasticity is important to give the brain flexibility. It is necessary for the formation of memory. Also, plasticity ensure that patients with a stroke, certain parts of the brain fail, other parts of the brain the lost functionality.
