By Rebecca Boyle Posted 11.16.2011 at 10:48 am 9 Comments

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 transmitters are chemicals that activate ion channels in the neurons. The ion channels open and close to change the neuron’s electrical potential, which then causes the cell to fire an electrical impulse.

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Science, Rebecca Boyle, artificial intelligence, chips, cognitive computing, computer chips, neurons, neuroscience, parallel computing, synapses
The new chip works by mimicking the action of these ion channels, according to MIT News. The transistors allow current to flow through them continuously — unlike the on-off design common to so many other chips, but like the synaptic cleft “gate” in brain cells. By tweaking the chip transistors, MIT engineers can mimic specific ion channels in neurons — in this way, they can create any synaptic situation that would lead to the firing of an electrical impulse.

“We now have a way to capture each and every ionic process that’s going on in a neuron,” said Chi-Sang Poon, a research scientist in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and author of a paper describing the new chip.

This ion channel mimicry will allow researchers to emulate synaptic plasticity, a special feature of brain cells that enables them to perform tasks to which they were not initially assigned. Computer chips that can do this would be a major breakthrough.

The researchers say this chip is the first to demonstrate capability in spike-rate-dependent plasticity and and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. These two characteristics of the brain strengthen and weaken synaptic connections. So the chip’s ability to follow both paths lends it a much more realistic design.

The brain has about 100 billion neurons connected in various ways throughout a vast web of synapses, so just one synapse is a long way from an artificial brain. Still, it’s another step in learning not only how the brain works, but how scientists might apply some of those rules to electronic systems.

The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

9 Comments

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GMarsack
11/16/11 at 11:40 am

Neato Burrito!
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In space, no one can hear a tree fall in the forest.

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rg-5
11/16/11 at 11:49 am

Ok cool! But 400 transies to emulate a _SINGLE_ Synapse? That's just hopeless! The brain has billions of synapses!! Do the math... They're taking the wrong approach here! By the way the brain doesn't have static wiring it can rewire itself. And to add each synapse can connect to many many _MANY_ synapses all at once, can this chip do that?

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NoConsequenc3
11/16/11 at 11:50 am

So theoretically, if we made 100 billion of these hooked together it would function as a slow human brain's memory?

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rg-5
11/16/11 at 11:55 am

Oh and we shouldn't just apply natures methods but also improve them and change them for the better in our copied versions, because evolutionary development isn't quite "logical" with some of its implementations.

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Q
11/16/11 at 11:59 am

I reading, I am getting excited, 400 transistors to emulate the activity of a single brain synapse.

I did a search on the internet for quantity of human brain synapse. There are about 100 to 500 trillion synapses in the human brain.

Ok, joy and excitement gone.......

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alias007
11/16/11 at 12:50 pm

The point here was never to create a full scale artificial brain, but to attempt to emulate synaptic plasticity. There's lots that we can learn with a chip like this. The last paragraph says it all.

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cobaltblue1975
11/16/11 at 4:11 pm

If they can make just one of these with only 400 transistors, it is very good news! Consider how many transistors are on current Microprocessors.

For example,

Intel's 10 Core xeon E7 Processor host 2.6 billion transistors at 32 nanometers.

Nvidia's gf100 series GPU's host 3 billion transistors at 40 nanometers.

And there are companies thinking as low as the 8 nanometer realm in the next few years.

Just imagine the number of transistors you could pack on using scales that small.

Its all a matter of scaling it down to a stable die process. I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't already been cooked up somewhere already.

Don't take life to seriously! You'll never get out of it alive.
-Elbert Hubbard

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drchuck1
11/17/11 at 9:31 am

some of you need to chill out, this is just one step towards an artificial brain, to claim you can't build a brain with this just shows you need a brain before commenting, negative cheers

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Robot
11/19/11 at 9:35 am

Robotic brains are just so beautiful!
Sigh.......

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Science sees no further than what it can sense.
Religion sees beyond the senses.



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