According to a recent LIVE SCIENCE article, scientists are proposing to use lab-grown "minibrains" as biological hardware to create new biocomputers. The so-called minibrains are clusters of neurons that can be grown from human stem cells, and are capable of transmitting electrical signals similar to those in the human brain.
The idea is to use the minibrains as "neuromorphic computing devices," which can perform complex computations in a way that is similar to the human brain. The researchers behind the proposal suggest that the use of biological hardware could have a number of advantages over traditional electronic computing devices, including greater energy efficiency and the ability to perform complex computations with a high degree of parallelism.
While the idea of using biological components to create computing devices is not new, the use of lab-grown neurons could provide a new level of control and precision in the development of these systems.
