Forwarded message: >From email@fringeware.com Sun Oct 1 23:01:12 1995 From: FringeWare Daily Precedence: list List-Server: info@fringeware.com Errors-To: owner-email@fringeware.com Message-Id: <9510011528.fw.2662@fringeware.com> X-Www-Page: http://fringeware.com/HTML/online.html#digest Keywords: realingled fallinois senger commo possibilisa reidel Subject: SCI - A Silicon Chip with a Lot of Nerve Reply-To: jim@SmallWorks.COM (Jim Thompson) Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 15:13:42 -0500 Apparently-To: fwlist-daily@fringeware.com Sent from: jim@SmallWorks.COM (Jim Thompson) Forwarded-by: Peter Langston >From: Science News, 8/26/95, Vol 148, P.137 A Silicon Chip with a Lot of Nerve The science fantasy of computers that send signals straight to a brain has taken a small step toward reality. Peter Fromherz and Alfred Stett, physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, have made a silicon chip that can directly stimulate a nerve cell. Their so-called silicon-to-neuron junction, reported in the Aug. 21 Physical Review Letters, triggers a single nerve cell in a leech without killing the cell. "It is possible now to interface individual neurons with silicon microstructures in both directions," they say, "from silicon to neuron, by stimulation of a [membrane] spot, and from neuron to silicon, using a metalfree field effect transistor." In previous artificial nerve stimulators, metal leads tended to corrode and shed toxic by-products. In contrast, the silicon chip propagates a voltage pulse from a tiny spot on the cell membrane. This causes a buildup of positive charge that trips a neuronal impulse. The new chip complements "neuron transistors" that receive ionic nerve impulses, transforming them into an electric impulse on a silicon chip. Together, the two microstructures offer the possibility of direct, two-way communication between a nervous system and machinery. Still, employing the device for medical purposes -- to control an artificial limb, for example -- lies far in the distance, the scientists conclude. Exactly how practical it will prove, they say, "remains to be seen." -- Jim Thompson jim@SmallWorks.COM