The media talks perhaps too often about science fiction becoming scientific fact, but such discussion may be justified when it comes to recent work in China.
Researchers at Tianjin University created a robot – compared in one report to Frankenstein’s monster – that had a brain-like control centre made from a clump of nerve cells or neurons cultured in a laboratory.
This ambitious fusion of electronics and biology is one of the latest inventions in the brave new world of biocomputing.
According to a recent report by the UK-based Nuffield Council on Bioethics, technologists are increasingly looking to develop devices where organoids – tiny, lab-grown organs – are connected to sensors and output mechanisms and that, like the Tianjin robot, respond to electrical stimulation and carry out tasks.
The field of biocomputing involves much more than sci-fi robots, as clusters of neurons may have the potential to be used within computers of the kind that most of us have.
Brain organoids –tiny brain-like bundles of neurons – are typically generated from stem cells, just as tiny kidney or lung organoids have been for many years, often because they are useful research tools.
According to Dr Michael Barros, a lecturer in AI and engineering in medicine at the University of Essex in the UK, it is "absolutely" possible that even consumer electronics could in future have real neurological material embedded within them.
To read more, click here.