This cordyceps fungus computer is a bit too 'Last of Us' for comfort
Computational cordyceps. Fungus-powered logic functions. No, not a cynical Last of Us franchising spin off but the actual direction of research at the aptly titled Unconventional Computing Laboratory, part of the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK. And only slightly less scary than a cordyceps fungus brain monster.
Popular Science(opens in new tab) (via Tom's Hardware(opens in new tab)) has a piece on the work being done by lab lead Professor Andrew Adamatzky and his colleagues. Author of such works as The Science of Slime Mould(opens in new tab), which argues that slime moulds perform complex computations that prove «the absence of a brain does not exclude an amorphous living creature from intelligence,» Adamatzky and co. are reportedly working on actual computers composed, in part, of fungus.
«I mix mycelium cultures with hemp or with wood shavings, and then place it in closed plastic boxes and allow the mycelium to colonize the substrate, so everything then looks white,» explains Andrew Adamatzky. «Then we insert electrodes and record the electrical activity of the mycelium. So, through the stimulation, it becomes electrical activity, and then we get the response.»
In terms of turning that into a working computer, it goes something like this. In animal brains, neurons use electrical spikes to communicate signals, something that can be replicated when constructing artificial neural networks. Mycelium has a similar ability to create electrical spikes.
In simple terms, the presence or absence of a spike represents the ones and zeros of binary code. What's more, when mycelium are stimulated at two separate points, the conductivity increases, and they communicate faster and more reliably, effectively forming
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