According to researchers from Johns Hopkins University, a “biocomputer” working on human brain cells could be developed within our lifetime. This technology is expected to exponentially expand the capabilities of modern computers and open up new areas of research. The team’s “organoid intelligence” plan was outlined in a recent paper published in the journal Nature. Frontiers in Science.
“Computers and artificial intelligence are driving the technological revolution, but they’ve reached a limit,” said Thomas Hartung, professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering, who led the study. . . “The biocomputer is a major effort to compress computing power and increase its efficiency to overcome our current technological limitations.”
For nearly two decades, scientists have used small lab-grown organoids similar to fully grown organs to conduct experiments on kidneys, lungs, and other organs without resorting to human or animal testing. More recently, Hartung and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins have been studying brain organoids, pen-sized spheres with neurons, and other features that promise to support essential functions such as learning and memory.
“This opens up the possibility of studying how the human brain works,” Hartung said. Said. “Because you can start manipulating the system by doing things that you cannot ethically do with the human brain.”
Hartung began growing brain cells and harvesting them into functional organoids in 2012, using cells from human skin samples that have been reprogrammed into a state similar to embryonic stem cells. Each organoid contains about 50,000 cells, approximately the size of the nervous system of a fruit fly. Now he envisions the creation of a futuristic computer with such brain organoids.
Computers running on this “biological hardware” could begin to reduce the increasingly unsustainable power requirements of supercomputers over the next decade, Hartung said. While computers can process numbers and data faster than humans, the brain is much smarter at making complex logical decisions like telling the difference between a dog and a cat.
“The brain is still unmatched by modern computers,” Hartung said. Said. “Kentucky’s newest supercomputer, Frontier, costs $600 million and measures 6,800 square feet. Just last June, for the first time, it surpassed the computing power of a single human brain, but consumed a million times more energy.”
According to Hartung, it could take decades for an organoid intelligence to power a system as smart as a mouse. But by increasing the production of brain organoids and training them with artificial intelligence, he envisions a future where biocomputers support superior computing speed, processing power, data efficiency and storage capabilities.
“It will take decades before we get anything comparable to any type of computer,” Hartung said. “But if we don’t start creating funding programs for it, it’s going to be much more difficult.”
One of the study’s leaders, Lena Smirnova, an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, said organoid intelligence could also revolutionize research testing for neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegeneration.
“We typically want to compare brain organoids from advanced donors with brain organoids from donors with autism,” said Smirnova. “The tools we’ve developed for the biocomputer are the same tools that will allow us to understand changes in neural networks that are characteristic of autism without using animals or accessing patients, so we can understand the mechanisms behind why patients have such information.
To evaluate the ethical implications of working with organoid intelligence, the team comprised a diverse consortium of scientists, bioethicists and the public.
Source: Port Altele
