Neuroscience

A computer hidden inside a single strand of fabric sounds like sci-fi, but it isn't. Researchers have built a “fiber chip” thinner than hair, which could be turned into everyday clothing or used to treat neurological diseases and aid robotic surgery.

The brain-machine interface race is on. While Elon Musk's Neuralink has garnered most of the headlines in this field, a new small and thin chip out of Switzerland makes it look downright clunky by comparison. It also works impressively well.

"The first human received an implant from Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well." Elon Musk has announced a milestone moment at his brain-machine interface company, after a surgical robot successfully installed its first human brain chip.

Following years of controversy, including whistleblowers reporting of rushed experimental “hack jobs” that resulted in as many as 1,500 animal fatalities, Elon Musk's brain-chip implant company has begun recruiting for its landmark first human trial.

Last year, Monash University scientists created the "DishBrain" – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.

Speaking voice commands to a mobile device in public can make some people feel a bit silly, plus background noise may be a problem. French startup Wisear has developed an alternative, in the form of earbuds that "read" the user's facial activity.

BIG's new neuroscience center in Denmark will bring together psychiatry and neuroscience research under one roof. The building's light-filled interior will feature a clever layout that it likens to the folds of the cerebral cortex.

Facebook has taken the unusual step of revealing its next-gen augmented reality gear at a working prototype stage, including a staggering neuro-motor controller that reads nerve impulses in your wrist at single-neuron resolutions.

Scientists have successfully bridged the gap between organic and artificial. A team has created biohybrid synapses that let living cells communicate with electronic systems, not with electrical signals but with neurotransmitters like dopamine.

Researchers in Europe and the UK have managed to connect biological and artificial neurons together. The biological neurons were grown in Italy, sent signals through an artificial synapse in the UK to communicate with artificial neurons in Zurich.

Not a lot has been revealed since Elon Musk announced his Neuralink venture two years ago, but the company today emerged from the shadows to share its progress so far, along with its plans for the future, which involve implanting its first chips in human as early next year. ​​

After 12 years of work, researchers at the University of Manchester in England have completed construction of a "SpiNNaker" (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) supercomputer. It can simulate the internal workings of up to a billion neurons through a whopping one million processing units.