Scientists create computer from human brain tissue and it can hear voices

A team of researchers has published a new paper in the journal Nature Electronics that details the creation of a "biocomputer" that consists of lab-grown human brain tissue and electronic circuits.

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The scientists behind the study explained they took a bunch of bundled human cells called "organoids" and changed them into neurons, which were then attached to a circuit board. Together, these ingredients created what the researchers call "Brainoware," a so-called bridge between AI and organoids. The question the researchers asked themselves was, "Can we leverage the biological neural network within the brain organoid for computing?"

The researchers hooked up Brainoware to a plate made up of thousands of electrodes. The scientists then sent data in the form of electric pulses to the organoid, and then "decoded" the response through a machine-learning algorithm. According to the study, the team was able to get the organoid to recognize the voices of different people speaking after being fed the data from 240 voice recordings.

The team writes in the study that once Brainoware was trained on these voices, it was able to identify the original speaker of the voice 78% of the time.