Researchers Grow Extra Brain RAM

Want to become a cyborg? Easy. Simply injecting a chemical stimulant into a culture of live neurons creates an artificial memory bank, according to work conducted by Tel Aviv-Jaffa researchers Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob.

The implication is that one could take a bit of one's brain, grow an upgrade in a jar, then plug it back in. It's just like a lobotomy played in reverse, set to the theme tune from Benny Hill.

Perhpas these are the first seeds of something akin to Blade Runner's Replicants — humans fabricated (as opposed to genetically engineered) from the ground up.

“We show that using local chemical stimulations it is possible to imprint persisting (days) multiple memories (collective modes of neuron firing) in the activity of cultured neural networks. Micro-droplets of inhibitory antagonist are injected at a location selected based on real-time analysis of the recorded activity. The neurons at the stimulated locations turn into a focus for initiating synchronized bursting events (the collective modes) each with its own specific spatiotemporal pattern of neuron firing.”

What's the CAS latency on those brains?

Researchers Produce Chemically Operated Neuro-memory Chip [DailyTech]