Neuronal Computer Chips Communicate Like Brain Cells
Neuronal Chip This image shows a fabricated analog very-large-scale integration (VLSI) chip used to mimic neuronal processes involved in memory and learning. Guy Rachmuth/via MIT Brain-like computers could soon become a lot more common. Earlier this year, we heard about a project involving DARPA and IBM to create a functioning neurosynaptic chip, which works somewhat like a brain in the way it learns and remembers. Now MIT engineers have designed a chip that mimics the function of a synapse in the brain, in its ability to model specific communications among neurons. The new chip could help researchers study the brain, and it could be used in neural prosthetic devices such as artificial retinas. The MIT chip has 400 transistors, which together can emulate the activity of a single brain synapse. A synapse is the gap between neurons that enables the release and binding of neurotransmitters to and from dendrites. These...