OMG! .. Scientists have developed a ‘living PC’ made from mushrooms …
Wetware: is the concept of merging hardware and software with living tissue.. as also seen on Elon Musk and his brainchips, although it has been science-fiction fodder for decades.
We’ve seen it in TV shows like Star Trek with the blind character Geordi La Forge’s visor that allows him to see.
And its been seen in video games where all sorts of electronics can be fused to those who can afford it.
but real science is now working on functioning Mycelia networks to form the architecture of future computer brain interfaces .. to learn more I searched online
Megaprojects YouTube channel gave me a good rundown >
According to a lead researcher, (professor Andrew Adamatzky), mushrooms are an ideal organism to experiment with because their mycelium acts much like the human brain.
Mycelia are thin hair-like parts of a fungus’s root system that can transmit electrical impulses! which is very similar to brain synapses. In fact, mushrooms connected to the same network of mycelia underground can sometimes communicate with electrical signals over substantial distances.
The real mushroom computer resides in a plastic container full of funky mushroom juice (mycelium) as above. Mycelium is a network of fungal threads or hyphae. Mycelia often grow underground but can also thrive in other places such as rotting tree trunks.
What makes it amazing is this ability to communicate with electrical signals over substantial distances. This trait allowed the scientists to use mushrooms as motherboard component analogs.
Spikes of electrical activity, or the lack of them, are translated into ones and zeros, respectively, mimicking the ingrained binary language of computers.
“We found actually that mushrooms produce action potential-like spikes. The same spikes as neurons produce,” Adamatzky told Popular Science magazine. “We’re the first lab to report about spiking activity of fungi measured by microelectrodes, and the first to develop fungal computing and fungal electronics.”
As you would expect, mushroom computers cannot currently compare to traditional hardware. While Adamatzky maintains that stimulating the fungus at two separate points increases conductivity for faster and more reliable communication, it’s not near the speed of solid-state electronics.
However, it does allow the mushrooms to establish memories. Adamatzky equates it to how the human brain forms habits.
“Right now, it’s just feasibility studies. We’re just demonstrating that it’s possible to implement computation, and it’s possible to implement basic logical circuits and basic electronic circuits with mycelium,” Adamatzky explained. “In the future, we can grow more advanced mycelium computers and control devices.”
The research may also lead to advancements in machine/brain interfacing, which has applications in the fields of prosthetics and behavior control disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
And then they will have a lot of fun interfacing their networks to DMT mycelium organisms ..
