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CL1: Using Actually-alive Neurons as a Computer (First Commercial Release) (corticallabs.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This from the same guys who got neurons in a petri dish to successfully play pong. The CL1 is a box with biological neurons inside that can be controlled and programmed with an API. They've been working on this for quite a while and just made their first public release.

Its expected the CL1 will be extremely helpful for researching Alzheimer's and other neurological based disorders, including neuron response to medicine for faster drug testing.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is so fucked up. Let's stay with vegan computers!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Don't worry all neurons are cage free, grass fed, open range

For real though, where the neurons come from is as interesting/impressive as the computation itself. The guys at Cortical, at least in prototyping, give blood samples, revert blood cells into a stem cell state, and then (over the course of 6 months) they convert their stem cells into neurons before putting them into a dish. (To be clear, Cortical did not invent the stem cell tech at all. Apparently its standard practice and nobody in the bio engineering world cared to tell the rest of the world.)

Meaning... You could theoretically build a computer out of your own neurons and then program them.