Researchers from Indiana University in Bloomington have made a breakthrough in the field of computer technology by creating a system that combines human brain tissue with electronics. This innovative project, known as Brainoware, has shown promising results in solving the problems of speech recognition and predicting nonlinear equations. The study, which can be found in the journal Nature Communications, paves the way for a new architecture of computer systems.
To create Brainoware, the researchers utilized brain organoids, which are mini-brains grown in laboratories from human stem cells. These organoids do not possess consciousness, emotions, or thoughts, but they are functional structures that provide insights into the development and function of the human brain.
The Brainoware system involves connecting organoids to high-density microelectrodes using tank computing algorithms. Tank computing is a computational approach where the reservoir, or tank, remains unchanged while the input and output layers can be trained or configured. This simplifies the learning process and reduces computational costs, as it eliminates the need to train all layers of the neural network. Tank computing is particularly useful for tasks involving time series data, speech processing, and other scenarios that require the consideration of temporal sequences of events.
While the accuracy of Brainoware falls slightly behind that of hardware computers operating in artificial intelligence, this groundbreaking achievement has laid the foundation for future advancements in computer systems. The integration of human brain tissue with electronics opens up new possibilities for developing more advanced and efficient technologies.