The computers that run on human brain cells

"In a town on the shores of Lake Geneva sit clumps of living human brain cells for hire. These blobs, about the size of a grain of sand, can receive electrical signals and respond to them - much as computers do. Research teams from around the world can send the blobs tasks, in the hope that they will process the information and send a signal back."

"Welcome to the world of wetware, or biocomputers. In a handful of academic laboratories and companies, researchers are growing human neurons and trying to turn them into functional systems equivalent to biological transistors. These networks of neurons, they argue, could one day offer the power of a supercomputer without the outsized power consumption. The results so far are limited. But keen scientists are already buying or borrowing online access to these brain-cell processors - or even investing tens of thousands of dollars to secure their own models."

""Trying to understand biological intelligence is a very interesting scientific problem," says Benjamin Ward-Cherrier, a robotics researcher at the University of Bristol, UK, who rents time on the Swiss brain blobs. "And looking at it from the bottom up - with simple small versions of our brain and building those up - I think is a better way of doing it than top down.""

Clusters of living human neurons, about the size of a grain of sand, are cultivated to receive and respond to electrical signals and perform computational tasks sent by remote research teams. These biocomputers, or wetware, are grown in a few laboratories and companies as networks of neurons intended to act like biological transistors and potentially provide supercomputer-level capability with much lower energy use. Results remain limited, yet researchers rent or buy access and sometimes invest heavily in their own models. Some aim to replace conventional computers; others study biological intelligence. Skeptics warn that hype and perceived sentience could cause ethical and practical setbacks.

Read at Nature