A wetware computer is an organic computer (also known as an artificial organic brain or a neurocomputer) built from living neurons. Professor Bill Ditto, at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...

, is the primary researcher

Researcher

A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts. Researchers can work in academic, industrial, government, or private institutions.-Examples of research institutions:...

 driving the creation of these artificially constructed, but still organic brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

s. One prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

 is constructed from leech

Leech

Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea. Like other oligochaetes such as earthworms, leeches share a clitellum and are hermaphrodites. Nevertheless, they differ from other oligochaetes in significant ways...

 neurons, and is capable of performing simple arithmetic

Arithmetic

Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers...

 operations. The concepts are still being researched and prototyped, but in the near future, it is expected that artificially constructed organic brains, even though they are still considerably simpler in design than animal brains, should be capable of simple pattern recognition tasks such as handwriting recognition

Handwriting recognition

Handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning or...

.

See also

• Wetware (brain)
  Wetware (brain)
  The term wetware is used to describe the embodiment of the concepts of the physical construct known as the central nervous system and the mental construct known as the human mind...
  
  
• Artificial neural network
  Artificial neural network
  An artificial neural network , usually called neural network , is a mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons, and it processes...
  
  
• Unconventional computing
  Unconventional computing
  Unconventional computing is computing by a wide range of new or unusual methods. It is also known as alternative computing. The different methods of unconventional computing include optical computing, quantum computing, chemical computing, natural computing, biologically-inspired computing, wetware...
  
  
• Chemical computer
  Chemical computer
  A chemical computer, also called reaction-diffusion computer, BZ computer or gooware computer is an unconventional computer based on a semi-solid chemical "soup" where data is represented by varying concentrations of chemicals. The computations are performed by naturally occurring chemical...
  
  
• Neuron
  Neuron
  A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling. Chemical signaling occurs via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons connect to each other to form networks. Neurons are the core components of the nervous...
  
  
• Quantum computer
  Quantum computer
  A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from traditional computers based on transistors...
  
  

External links

• Biological computer born
• Neurocomputers - computers are far from comparable to human brain (Discover Magazine, October 2000)
• New material discovered for organic computers