Image showing a brain organoid with neurons (magenta), cell nuclei (blue), and other supporting cells (red and green). (Image Credit: Jesse Plotkin/Johns Hopkins University)
The is an animated science fiction series called "Pantheon" that explores this very topic. The series didn't end well…
Human brain cells could eventually power biocomputers within our lifetime. At least, that's what John Hopkins University researchers believe can be achieved with organoid intelligence (OI). They also say this could outperform modern computing capabilities and create new study fields.
"Computing and artificial intelligence have been driving the technology revolution, but they are reaching a ceiling," said Thomas Hartung, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering who is spearheading the work. "Biocomputing is an enormous effort of compacting computational power and increasing its efficiency to push past our current technological limits."
Scientists have used organoids, tiny lab-grown tissue akin to fully grown organs, for experiments on lungs, kidneys, and other organs without human or animal testing. John Hopkins researchers have been working with brain organoids, pen dot-sized orbs containing neurons, and other features that could hold learning and memory capabilities. "This opens up research on how the human brain works," Hartung said. "Because you can start manipulating the system, doing things you cannot ethically do with human brains."
In 2012, he started growing and assembling brain cells into organoids via samples of human skin cells reprogrammed into an embryonic state-like stem cell. A single organoid houses 50,000 cells similar in size to a fruit fly's nervous system. Hartung believes computers powered by brain organoids could emerge in the future.
Within the next decade, he says this technology may alleviate supercomputing energy demands. While computers perform number solving and data faster than humans, brains make complex decisions."The brain is still unmatched by modern computers," Hartung said. "Frontier, the latest supercomputer in Kentucky, is a $600 million, 6,800-square-foot installation. Only in June of last year, it exceeded for the first time the computational capacity of a single human brain—but using a million times more energy."
The architecture of an OI system for biocomputing. (Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University)
However, it might be decades before we see OI powering a system as smart as a mouse. Up-scaling the production of brain organoids while training them with AI may lead to biocomputers supporting superior computing speed, data efficiency, processing power, and storage capabilities.
3D microfluidic devices to support scalability and long-term homeostasis of brain organoids. (Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University)
Additionally, OI can revolutionize neurodevelopmental disorder and neurodegeneration drug testing research. "We want to compare brain organoids from typically developed donors versus brain organoids from donors with autism," Lena Smirnova, a Johns Hopkins assistant professor of environmental health and engineering who co-leads the study, said. "The tools we are developing toward biological computing are the same tools that will allow us to understand changes in neuronal networks specific for autism, without having to use animals or to access patients, so we can understand the underlying mechanisms of why patients have these cognition issues and impairments."
There are still some ethical concerns with organoid intelligence, so a consortium of bioethicists, scientists, and public members have been embedded into the team.
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