Keren Hanna, Partzsch Johannes, Marom Shimon, Mayr Christian G
Department of Physiology, Biophysics and Systems Biology, Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Network Biology Research Laboratory, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Front Neurosci. 2019 May 8;13:432. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2019.00432. eCollection 2019.
Developing technologies for coupling neural activity and artificial neural components, is key for advancing neural interfaces and neuroprosthetics. We present a biohybrid experimental setting, where the activity of a biological neural network is coupled to a biomimetic hardware network. The implementation of the hardware network (denoted NeuroSoC) exhibits complex dynamics with a multiplicity of time-scales, emulating 2880 neurons and 12.7 M synapses, designed on a VLSI chip. This network is coupled to a neural network , where the activities of both the biological and the hardware networks can be recorded, processed, and integrated bidirectionally in real-time. This experimental setup enables an adjustable and well-monitored coupling, while providing access to key functional features of neural networks. We demonstrate the feasibility to functionally couple the two networks and to implement control circuits to modify the biohybrid activity. Overall, we provide an experimental model for neuromorphic-neural interfaces, hopefully to advance the capability to interface with neural activity, and with its irregularities in pathology.
开发用于耦合神经活动与人工神经组件的技术，是推进神经接口和神经假体的关键。我们展示了一种生物混合实验装置，其中生物神经网络的活动与仿生硬件网络相耦合。硬件网络（称为NeuroSoC）的实现展现出具有多种时间尺度的复杂动力学，模拟了2880个神经元和1270万个突触，设计在一个超大规模集成电路芯片上。该网络与一个神经网络相耦合，在其中生物网络和硬件网络的活动都可以被实时记录、处理和双向整合。这种实验装置实现了可调节且能得到良好监测的耦合，同时提供了对神经网络关键功能特征的访问。我们证明了在功能上耦合这两个网络并实现控制电路以修改生物混合活动的可行性。总体而言，我们为神经形态神经接口提供了一个实验模型，有望提升与神经活动及其病理状态下的不规则性进行接口连接的能力。
