---
title: Gray Matter
abstract: "Neuromorphic systems and brain interfacing"
categories:
- work
content-tags:
- biology
- complexity
- neurology
- HCI
- networks
external: https://tinyletter.com/gerwitz/letters/shades-of-gray
---

These are exciting times for neurons. IBM has [neuromorphic chip arrays](http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/brain-chip.shtml), Duke has [functional networks of mammalian brains](http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=683) while UW is [linking humans](http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/09/23/uw-team-links-two-human-brains-for-question-and-answer-experiment/), and Ohio State is [growing human brains](https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/08/18/human-brain-model/) to 5-week structure.

Before getting too excited about transhuman consciousness uploads, remember that we still don’t really understand how the brain's [cells](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-brain-cells-make-mice-smart/) and [circuits](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217338) work. If you start getting confident that modern medicine has humans figured out, just ask any two experts to explain dopamine.

This does bring hope, though, that we’re going to see some interesting advances in bio-based or -inspired computing and brain interfacing in the next decade. And neuromorphic hardware of any sort has the potential to move more "smarts" down from the cloud so [our agents can be more personal](https://safelyignored.com/sirikit).
