80,000 mouse brain cells used to build a living computer

A computer built using tens of thousands of living brain cells can recognise simple patterns of light and electricity. It could eventually be incorporated into a robot that also uses living muscle tissues.

Artificially intelligent algorithms inspired by the brain called neural networks have been used for everything from chatbots to searching for new laws of physics. Normally, these algorithms run on conventional computers, but Andrew Dou at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his colleagues wondered whether they could instead use actual living brain cells – …