“Your brain works with chemicals, neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Our materials can interact with them electrochemically,” says Alberto Salleo, a materials scientist at Stanford University who writes about the potential of organic neuromorphic devices.
Salleo and other researchers have created electronic devices using soft organic materials that can act as transistors (amplifying and modifying electrical signals), memory cells (storing information), and other basic electronic components.
His work stems from growing interest in neuromorphic computer circuits that mimic the way human neural connections, or synapses, work. These circuits, made of silicon, metal or organic materials, work less than digital computers and more than networks of neurons in the human brain.
A single neuron receives signals from many other neurons, and all these signals together affect the electrical state of the receiving neuron. In essence, each neuron serves both as a computing device (integrating the value of all the signals it receives) and as a memory device: storing the value of all these combined signals as an infinitely variable analog value instead of zero or one. digital computers.
Source: Ferra
