World First as Artificial Neurons Developed to Cure Chronic Diseases
mhajicek writes:
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-world-artificial-neurons-chronic-diseases.html:
Artificial neurons on silicon chips that behave just like the real thing have been invented by scientists-a first-of-its-kind achievement with enormous scope for medical devices to cure chronic diseases, such as heart failure, Alzheimer's, and other diseases of neuronal degeneration.
[...] The researchers successfully modelled and derived equations to explain how neurons respond to electrical stimuli from other nerves. This is incredibly complicated as responses are 'non-linear' - in other words if a signal becomes twice as strong it shouldn't necessarily elicit twice as big a reaction-it might be thrice bigger or something else.
They then designed silicon chips that accurately modelled biological ion channels, before proving that their silicon neurons precisely mimicked real, living neurons responding to a range of stimulations.
The researchers accurately replicated the complete dynamics of hippocampal neurons and respiratory neurons from rats, under a wide range of stimuli.
[...] More information:Optimal solid state neurons, Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13177-3 , https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13177-3
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.