Synapse mimic may provide a link to brain-like computers

Engineers and physicists from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Colorado have now developed a component that they claim behaves in the same way as synapses, the biological connections and switches between nerve cells in the human brain, and may even be able to outperform real synapses in some respects. Publishing their research in Science Advances, the NIST team, led by Mike Schneider, used superconducting technology in their artificial synapse, which is key to its performance.

Computers that function like biological brains, known as neuromorphic systems, are believed to have potential for running artificial intelligence programmes that have to make decisions based on incoming data, such as those used for medical diagnosis or operating autonomous vehicles, because they would have the ability to process data both in sequence and simultaneously, and store data in a distributed way. This would allow them to mimic human perception more closely and recognise patterns, improving decision-making. Their construction depends on being able to copy the characteristic way that neurons in the brain communicate with each other: through electrical pulses that rise rapidly from no current to a signal current. This is known as a spiking signal, and in the brain is seen in synapses.