From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Jan 27 2002 - 22:23:15 MST
I recently spoke of where neural network technologies might be taking us
[url=http://forum.javien.com/XMLmessage.php?id=id::TzF7Jk84-E0Ym-GzU2-dAoa-HigWNk0DFnxe]"virus:
NDE info - Thank you Joe!", Hermit,Fri 2002-01-25 23:05[/url] and left open
the possible interfaces. While I still think that a non-invasive interface
using an engineered metal bearing virus designed to attach directly to
neurons to permit "easy" interfacing using electromagnetic coupling is a
strong possibility (refer
[url=http://forum.javien.com/XMLmessage.php?id=id::XERAICIg-AhZq-AGI4-DSAO-LyUrYEBwG1Zu]"Re:
virus: Forward to Virus from Hermit", Hermit, Thu 2001-07-26 22:52[/url],
another possibility is currently opening up. According to the
[url=http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,48572,00.html]2001 Nov. 24 Wired
News[/url], scientists at the University of Texas are working towards being
able to graft a microelectronic circuit directly onto a neuron! (Similar
work is also taking place at the
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/technology/10NECO.html]Max Planck
Institute[/url] and at other research labs.)
While they are far from being ready to "plug us in" (they have many steps
yet to go before significant "direct connects" are feasible), this line of
research is fascinating, and a pretty good hint of things to come, as
described by Brian Korgel, [quote]"We can now take a semiconductor and
position it where we want it on a cell. We can interface microelectronic
materials with cells." [/quote]
They did run into an interesting roadblock in this process; current
semiconductor manufacturing techniques don't have the precision to align
an electronic quantum dot with just the right location on a neuron. So
Korgel and Christine Schmidt simply changed the rules -- they co-opted
peptides, a biomolecule, to connect with exactly the right protein on
the surface of the neuron!
If this process turns out to be successful, what might it eventually
mean to us? "Bio-prosthetics," for one thing, where artificial limbs
might work as naturally as real ones. But derivatives of this primary
research could be even more interesting, according to Korgel, [quote]On a
more basic level than the actual brain, you may be able to make a substrate,
put nerve cells on those, grow them and then put semiconductor dots on
different nerve cells -- and then use those nerve cells as a
computer.[/quote]
Shuning Nie, a quantum dot chemist at Indiana University, sums the
potential of this work up nicely, [quote]These are fairly far-out ideas.
But we are talking about interfacing semiconductor nanostructures and
biology. It's a big field.[/quote]
I would go so far as to suggest that this may well provide an alternative
bioelectrical brain-computer interface to the "viral doping" that I had
thought might get here first. Definitely a technology worth watching.
Hermit
_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:41 MDT