

Scientists Create Logic Gates from Living Neurons - amackera
http://robots.net/article/2746.html

======
Dilpil
Pretty cool, but before anyone starts talking about the coming age of bio
computation, keep in mind neurons are a horribly inefficient way of carrying
out this kind of computation.

~~~
mattmcknight
I was thinking something similar, that you are taking a complex biological
computation device that has over 1000 synapses, each carrying some complex
quantity of information, and reducing it to a bit. This is an inefficient use
of a neuron.

~~~
lallysingh
What's nice about this is that living cells can heal to an extent, which is
more than we can say for silicon.

~~~
glymor
AFAIK living cells doesn't heal they auto-destruct and are replaced by new
cells.

~~~
mechanical_fish
This requires one of those "yes and no" answers. _Sometimes_ cells auto-
destruct and are replaced by new cells. Other times, they heal. Both
strategies can be useful, depending on the situation.

------
davi
Very cool. Deeper info on project page:

[http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/EMoses/projects/NeuralDevi...](http://www.weizmann.ac.il/complex/EMoses/projects/NeuralDevices/index.html)

This shows an oscillator built of diodes. On to the Nature Physics article,
now.

------
dmoney
So would the barrier to making things like adders, latches, etc. (in other
words, everything you need to build a Von Neumann computer) be that they don't
have a way to make NOT gates? Or would making NOT gates out what they have not
be a big deal?

------
barrkel
Now, if they said they made living neurons (or models thereof) out of logic
gates, it might even be useful.

------
jff
I just want to see, oh, an 8-bit full adder. Not all that many gates and it
can do real work.

~~~
lallysingh
I'd love a fully brain-implantable FPU.

I'm even willing to start thinking in stack notation!

