Artificial Metallic Nanowire Network Can Give Rise to Brain-Like Functions

Artificial intelligence (AI) intends to develop intelligent machines to the extent that they can have cognitive abilities as that of the human brain. A lot of efforts have gone into developing machines with artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, to mimic the human brain in manufacturing such devices is a task far away from immediate results. The main roadblock is the human brain itself, its vast complexities in performing advanced cognitive abilities like emotions.

Advancing in this field of research, a recent paper published in Scientific Reports has reported to have obtained brain-like functions in an artificial metallic nanowire network. By using the artificial network, the research claims to generate electrical characteristics that are similar to those associated with higher order brain functions which are uniquely human, like memorisation, forgetting, becoming alert and return to calmer state. The team of researchers conducting the study were also able to clarify the mechanisms that induced electrical characteristics.

Modern neuroscience has zeroed down to the understanding that fundamental to all brain functions are the neurons and hundreds of connections in various combinations among them. The neurons and the synapses (connections) are studied in detail. However, many big questions remain to be answered, for example, how does the brain as a collective whole, performs these functions including memorisation, learning and forgetting, and how the brain becomes alert and returns to calm. One main obstacle in this regard is that the live brain cannot be manipulated in experimental research. The brain still remains a mysterious organ.

In the Scientific Reports research, the team of scientists built a complex brain-like network by integrating numerous nanowires made up of silver. These silver nanowires are coated with an insulating layer of approximately 1 nanometre thickness, made up of a polymer, named the PVP. The junction between two nanowires forms a synapse like in the real neurons. This network of silver nanowires forms a neuromorphic network. When a voltage is applied to this network, it gets activated and the resulting current struggles to find the optimal pathway, in other words, electrically the most efficient pathways. The team measured how the current pathway developed, how the retention and deactivation took shape while current was flowing through the network. They found that these processes are inherently fluctuating in nature during the course of progression, something similar to our own brain. These patterns in the artificial nanowire network resemble human brain’s activity patterns involved in the processes like memorisation, learning or forgetting. The observed patterns also resemble brain activity during processes like becoming alert and calm.

The research team is currently involved in the development of a brain-like memory device using the principle of human brain functioning, which will operate on fundamentally different principles than the current computers are based on.

Neuroscience has been able to bring out the activity patterns of the human brain busy in performing cognitively different advanced tasks. The main tool in this has appeared to be brain imaging. The fundamental unit of any kind of brain functioning is electrical and chemical activities. The electrical activity patterns that the brain emanates in performing various tasks are the signatures of brain activities. In the current research as well, the artificial nanowire network’s electrical activities are recorded and are matched with the signatures of brain activities captured already in previous experiments.