Engineers at Northwestern University have taken a striking leap toward merging machines with the human brain by printing artificial neurons that can actually communicate with real ones. A team at Northwestern printed artificial neurons from molybdenum disulfide, a semiconducting mineral, on flexible plastic that produce spiking waveforms closely matching biological action potentials; when delivered to living Purkinje cells in mouse cerebellar tissue, the artificial spikes drove the cells to fire, the first demonstration that a printed device can produce electrical signals a real brain cell accepts and responds to. This approach could enable direct brain-electronics communication for neuroprosthetics and dramatically reduce the energy demands of future AI systems.
The brain has finally met an artificial neuron willing to speak its language.