For decades, engineers have been building artificial neurons: tiny electronic circuits designed to fire electrical pulses the way real brain cells do. They've gotten rather good at it, producing convincing signals on the lab bench while almost never having to prove themselves against an actual living neuron. A bit like spending your life claiming to speak French without ever having to meet a French person.
Now though, a team at Northwestern has run the proper test, setting up the rendezvous with the help of graphene, molybdenum disulfide and electronic ink. The result is a bendy, low-cost artificial neuron whose signals arrive at the right speed and shape to talk to actual brain cells. When applied to slices of mouse brain, the printed devices reliably triggered living neurons to fire. Not imitation, but actual conversation.
Brain implants are the obvious application, but the ambition runs deeper. The brain is roughly five orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than a digital computer which becomes a fact worth taking note of whilst your AI data centre is ordering its own nuclear reactor.
The artificial neurons use soft, printable materials that better mimic the brain’s structure
🧐 What's in it for me? Two directions worth watching. In the near term, neuroprosthetics that can genuinely communicate with the nervous system, which matters for restoring hearing, vision and movement. Longer term, brain-inspired hardware that doesn't require a Greenland’s worth of power. Given where AI energy demand is heading, the second is less a nice-to-have than physics slowly becoming policy.
💵 Out of the Lab: Neuromorphic computing has drifted in and out of fashion for thirty years, but the AI power crunch is finally giving it a commercial reason to exist. A printable, biocompatible neuron is also conveniently well positioned for medical-device spinouts. Worth noting: Northwestern's Mark Hersam, who led the work, has previously founded two companies (NanoIntegris and Volexion), so commercial translation is not unfamiliar territory.
Innatera is a TU Delft spin-out building ultra-low-power neuromorphic chips for the sensor edge, with its Pulsar microcontroller already in commercial deployments. Closest researcher-founded analogue to where Northwestern's work could head.
BrainChip Holdings (ASX: BRN) sells its Akida neuromorphic processor commercially and is one of the few listed pure-plays in the space.
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has been developing its Loihi neuromorphic research chips for years, and a credible breakthrough in printable, biocompatible neurons should give the broader category renewed institutional weight.
Until next time.
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