The Memory Hacker

What the chip is saying is anyone´s guess-the content of the conversation is beside the point, Berger continues. It´s straight mechanic-talk from the man who has created a prototype of the world´s first memory implant, basically a hardware version of the brain cells in your hippocampus that are crucial to the formation of memory. The chip is meant to replace damaged neurons in the same way other prosthetic devices stand in for missing limbs or improve hearing. â€If we can mimic even 10 percent of the brain´s efficiency and power, it would be humongous,†Srinivasan tells me later.

Berger´s research team-an all-star roster of neuroscientists, mathematicians, computer engineers and bioengineers from around the country-has so far managed to reproduce only a minute amount of brain activity. Their chip models fewer than 12,000 neurons, compared with the 100 billion or so present in a human brain. Yet researchers within the field say that even this small number represents a stunning achievement in the field of neuro-engineering. â€It´s the type of science that can change the world,†says Richard H. Granger, Jr., a professor of brain sciences who leads the Neukom Institute for Interdisciplinary Computational Sciences at Dartmouth College. â€Replicating memory is going to happen in our lifetimes, and that puts us on the edge of being able to understand how thought arises from tissue-in other words, to understand what consciousness really means.â€

FROM FRINGE TO VANGUARD

Berger walks me outside on this balmy late-summer afternoon and drives us down the Santa Monica Freeway in his lemon-yellow Jaguar convertible. We´re on our way to USC´s Information Sciences Institute at Marina del Ray, just 30 minutes south from Wet Lab 412C, where computer programmers have been helping Berger fine-tune his chip. The big challenge, Berger says as he guns ahead of an 18-wheeler, is to make the chip fully bidirectional, so that it can both generate and receive signals, just like a real cell.

Berger´s professorial monologue seems strangely at odds with his flashy style. The hair flying back from his temples, the designer shirt, the sports car-all this gives him the bearing of a dot-com millionaire, not a researcher who spends his days thinking about rat brains. â€To be honest,†he says, â€the general reaction to what we´re doing is: Wow, this is really cool, but you guys are nuts.â€