'Living' cyborg chip stores rudimentary memories

The journey to pack more (proverbial) internal storage into the human brain has been going on for years, but a recent development at Tel-Aviv University could actually bring us one step closer to storing rudimentary memories on a manmade device. Reportedly, a new experiment has shown that it is indeed possible to store said memories "in an artificial culture of live neurons," which is a fairly significant step towards the "cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips." Essentially, Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob carefully examined the firing patterns of a sea of electrodes and found that they could "deliberately create additional firing patterns that coexist with the spontaneous patterns." These forced patterns could theoretically represent simple memories stored in the neuron network, and after giving it a go on their own, they were able to see "memory patterns" persist for over forty hours in a homegrown concoction. Of course, the duo isn't likely to stop before producing "the first chemically operated neuro-memory chip," and while we could all use a longer train of thought every now and then, the studies could also "help neurologists to understand how our brains learn and store information."

[Via TGDaily]

[EDomain @ May 30th 2007 10:18AM]

No frickin way----- WOW.

(Said to office co-workers after I have finished installing massive amounts of neuro-RAM):

"I will add your cultural distinctiveness to my own. Resistance is futile."

Office mate: "I, for one, welcome my cubicle dwelling, neuro-RAM enhanced overlord"

[Chris @ May 30th 2007 10:21AM]

Will it help me remember where I put my car keys?

[Jeff Snugglebutton @ May 30th 2007 10:30AM]

This is so far over my head, if you gave me a million dollars i still probably couldn't do what they just did...more importantly has Microsoft seen this and are they going to integrate this into their multi-touch Table 2.0?

[strider_mt2k @ May 30th 2007 10:51AM]

Sounds expensive.

I'll wait until they can remember it for me wholesale.

(Thanks Philip)

[david @ May 30th 2007 11:23AM]

It'll be assimilated into Vista 2 Pro, The Neural Edition, signed by Bill Gates and God.

[Sean @ May 30th 2007 11:42AM]

I hope that we see some sort of use for this technology sometime in my life. Given my relatively young age and (lack of) memory, I'm terrified what I'll be like when I hit retirement.

"Well, I found my keys but now I can't remember my wife's name..."

[EDomain @ May 30th 2007 12:20PM]

Firmware upgrades to your neural net may cause short term alzherimers, coughing up blood, seizures, and the craving of human brains....

[Chuckles McGee @ May 30th 2007 12:40PM]

It's very exciting, but far off from "remembering where you put your keys" or integration into memory chips. Placing live material in memory chips has one big problem: it dies. Yes yes, you can put it in a bath of glucose and ions and what not but it still dies. Maybe that will never be a problem for the constantly upgrading consumer, but a petri dish of cells isn't going to live anywhere as long as it would protected by the body. Perhaps redundancy will allow for safer memory storage, but still, creating uniform,resilent cells that can have accuracy good enough to run a system that requires near bit-for-bit accuracy will be a challenge to overcome.

[Holly @ May 30th 2007 12:43PM]

They're from Tel-Aviv... guess they didn't seem the movie "I, Robot" over there... :-\

[Ange @ May 30th 2007 12:51PM]

wow, this is really cool. I wonder it will help with Alzheimer's, i thought this list of symptoms was pretty cool: http://listafterlist.com/tabid/57/listid/695//Description+and+Symptoms+of+Alzheimers+Disease.aspx
and may help to figure out if this technology can be used for the disease

[ethana2 @ May 30th 2007 2:05PM]

@david: like God would have anything to do with a Microsoft product. I think not.

All the poor people who have never known anything else- I'm here to help you.
For any questions about Linux or OSS, my experiences with it, or help getting something working: [e-mail]

[Alexi @ May 30th 2007 2:37PM]

"Memories... You're talking about memories!"
It won't be long before people with these chips will have to be 'retired' by special cops. It's too bad they won't live, but then again, who does?

[EDomain @ May 30th 2007 3:10PM]

to Alexi:

"It's too bad they won't live, but then again, who does?"

Blade Runner is awesome----

[Alexi @ May 30th 2007 3:13PM]

With one of these chips, I could finally remember moments which would otherwise be lost in time like tears in the rain...

[don @ May 30th 2007 4:14PM]

now all i need is a body replacement. who's workin on that?

[DarkFader @ May 30th 2007 4:57PM]

And nobody had implanted some fake memories in the researchers' brains?

[dark star @ May 30th 2007 10:49PM]

WHOAA

[rafaelcobra @ May 31st 2007 4:35AM]

Yayyy!! Ghost hacking! hehe