In a story ripped from the opening scenes of a sci-fi horror movie, scientists have bridged a critical gap between the biological and electronic. The study, published in Nature Electronics (summarized in Nature), details a "hybrid biocomputer" combining lab-grown human brain tissue with conventional circuits and AI. Dubbed Brainoware, the system learned to identify voices with 78 percent accuracy. It could one day lead to silicon microchips fused with neurons. Brainoware combines brain organoids -- stem-cell-derived clusters of human cells morphed into neuron-filled "mini-brains" -- with conventional electronic circuits.

Scientists have unveiled a hybrid computer made of electronics and human brain-like tissues called'Brainoware.' It's part of a growing field called biological computing. The new technology features a brain'organoid' made of human stem cells which sit atop a circuit board that feeds the organoid information and reads its responses. This biological-electronic hybrid was able to identify people's by voice and make predictions about a complex math problem. The researchers claim the discovery represents a significant step toward hybrid computers, which merge man and machine to perform complex computing problems using a fraction of the power needed by conventional computers.

Balls of human brain cells linked to a computer have been used to perform a very basic form of speech recognition. The hope is that such systems will use far less energy for AI tasks than silicon chips. "This is just proof-of-concept to show we can do the job," says Feng Guo at Indiana University Bloomington. "We do have a long way to go." Brain organoids are lumps of nerve cells that form when stem cells are grown in certain conditions. "They are like mini-brains," says Guo.

With Brainoware, Guo aimed to use actual brain cells to send and receive information. When the researchers applied electrical stimulation to the hybrid system they'd built, Brainoware responded to those signals, and changes occurred in its neural networks. According to the researchers, this result suggests that the hybrid system did process information, and could perhaps even perform computing tasks without supervision. Guo and his colleagues then attempted to see if Brainoware could perform any useful tasks. In one test, they used Brainoware to try to solve mathematical equations.