For the first time, a team of scientists has shown that artificial neurons can behave exactly like their biological equivalents. When used directly in heart failure, they can reverse the course in the animal. So let this inspire you, breathe out and control your heart rate.
Certain neural networks at the base of the skull act as regulators of these parameters. However, in the case of heart failure, these gradually lose their effectiveness. For the first time, British researchers have developed implantable artificial neurons that can replicate the behavior of real neurons. The team has thesesuccessfully on heart failure in animalsapplied. These works are published in the journal Nature Communications and the Journal of Physiology.
“The function of neurons is like the butterfly effect. “It is very difficult to deduce the butterfly’s wing movements from observing the hurricane they caused”. This is explained by Sciences et Avenir Professor Alain Nogaret. He is the French scientist who led this work at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. This is the art his team must accomplish. Since our neurons send an electrical impulse to the neighboring neuron to communicate, this is not a linear path. However, undoubtedly a signal twice as strong does not necessarily cause a pulse twice as strong.
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The first challenge is to design electronic circuits that are very close to the ion channels through which neurons communicate. To send an electrical impulse to their neighbors, neurons use ions, which are electrically charged molecules. More specifically, the neuron opens and closes small tubes – the famous ion channels that crisscross around the membrane. In this way they let the ions in and out.
It is this movement that creates the electrical impulse. To mimic these channels,the researchers workedwith silicon. It is a material with well-known semiconductor properties. So, with the right design, researchers managed to design circuits that send the right impulse according to a threshold of received electrical potential identical to that of real neurons.
Designing the equivalent of 120 neurons that behave exactly like biological neurons on a small silicon chip is already a major achievement. But scientists have addressed a third challenge: versatility. “Our model is flexible and can mimic any type of neuron,” saysProf. Nogaret. In their work, it is the neurons that control breathing and heart rhythm from the base of the skull that they copied.
