{"id":159754,"date":"2023-03-07T17:27:55","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T23:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/biocomputing-with-mini-brains-as-processors-could-be-more-powerful-than-silicon-based-ai"},"modified":"2023-03-07T17:27:55","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T23:27:55","slug":"biocomputing-with-mini-brains-as-processors-could-be-more-powerful-than-silicon-based-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/biocomputing-with-mini-brains-as-processors-could-be-more-powerful-than-silicon-based-ai","title":{"rendered":"Biocomputing With Mini-Brains as Processors Could Be More Powerful Than Silicon-Based AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/108650530?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"640\" height=\"272\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So why not sidestep this conundrum and use neural tissue directly as a biocomputer?<\/p>\n<p>This month, a team from Johns Hopkins University <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/science\/articles\/10.3389\/fsci.2023.1017235\">laid out a daring blueprint<\/a> for a new field of computing: organoid intelligence (OI). Don\u2019t worry\u2014they\u2019re not talking about using living human brain tissue hooked up to wires in jars. Rather, as in the name, the focus is on a surrogate: brain organoids, better known as \u201cmini-brains.\u201d These pea-sized nuggets roughly resemble the <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/09\/08\/lab-grown-minibrains-show-activity-similar-to-babies-brains\/\">early fetal<\/a> human brain in their gene expression, wide variety of brain cells, and organization. Their neural circuits spark with spontaneous activity, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/31474560\/\">ripple with brain waves<\/a>, and can even detect light and <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2021\/01\/12\/meet-assembloids-mini-human-brains-with-muscles-attached\/\">control muscle movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In essence, brain organoids are highly-developed processors that duplicate the brain to a limited degree. Theoretically, different types of mini-brains could be hooked up to digital sensors and output devices\u2014not unlike brain-machine interfaces, but as a circuit outside the body. In the long term, they may connect to each other in a super biocomputer trained using biofeedback and machine learning methods to enable \u201cintelligence in a dish.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So why not sidestep this conundrum and use neural tissue directly as a biocomputer? This month, a team from Johns Hopkins University laid out a daring blueprint for a new field of computing: organoid intelligence (OI). Don\u2019t worry\u2014they\u2019re not talking about using living human brain tissue hooked up to wires in jars. Rather, as in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}