Like science and technology, health care and technology also go hand in hand.  Over the years, we’ve seen how technology has improved people’s lives, like in the early detection of life threatening tumors with the use of CT Scans, MRIs, PET scans, and also in treatment plans, like radiotherapy.  These technologies have prolonged the lives of many people and we are fortunate that companies such as Cisco, EMC, HP and others are focusing on how technology can benefit us more.

With virtual rats being made available for research, animal rights advocates will no longer stand in the way of medical research.  And if you need to monitor the vital signs of a patient in his normal environment, doing everyday activities, the patient doesn’t have to wear a bulky heart monitor that makes him look like a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest; he could just be given a wireless tattoo, so inconspicuous you’d forget that it’s there, making the data collected more accurate as well.

The above examples are all about how technology is injected in our lives, but what if a part of us is integrated into technology?  Yeah, we’ve seen robots doing human tasks, like cleaning the house, or those that have human features like a face with detailed muscle contractions, but what if computers could also think like humans?  Be able to asses things, adapt to situations, solve problems etc.  Awesome, right?  Right, and that’s what IBM had in mind when they started the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project in November 2008.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initially invested $4.9 million to the project, and has just added another $21 million for the production of a computer chip that functions much like the brain.   This neurosynaptic chip is said to require less power and will take up less space.  And there are already 2 prototypes undergoing testing.  IBM aims to arm it with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses that only consumes 1 kilowatt of power and takes up less than two liters of space.

The chips imitate the spiking neurons and synapses of the brain through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry.  It has a ‘neurosynaptic core’ with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons).   The goal is to create a system that rewires itself as it interacts with a particular environment.

“Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets, and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments,” said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research.

IBM has been investing in supercomputers like the Blue Brain and the Blue Gene project into making a virtual brain, or a brain made out of computer but still functions like a human brain, for scientific and medical research and advancement.  But these projects are quite cost inhibitive.  So, by making a chip that acts like a human brain, since it’s smaller, it will cost less in its production stage, though the research stage surely consumes a greater amount of funding.

With these innovations by IBM, what if they decided to create a robot that has all of these functions?  Think about it, A Blue Brain equipped with the neurosynaptic chip, add the Blue Gene, then give it a body.  IBM could create a cyborg or a Bicentennial Man.  I don’t know if this thought is scary or awesome, but it’s not that hard to imagine at this junction in time.