EU - SYNCH - A SYnaptically connected brain-silicon Neural Closed-loop Hybrid system

The brain, with its remarkable computational properties, provides animals with capabilities of physical autonomy, interaction and adaptation that are unmatched by any artificial system. The brain is a complex network that has evolved to optimize processing of real-world inputs by relying on event-based signaling and self-reorganizing connectivity. Spikes (the events) are transmitted between neurons through synapses which undergo continuous ‘birth’-‘death’ and adjustment, reconfiguring brain circuits and adapting processing to ever changing inputs. The scientific and technological objective of the project is to create a hybrid system where a neural network in the brain of a living animal (BNN) and a silicon neural network of spiking neurons on a chip (SNN) are interconnected by neuromorphic synapses, thus enabling co-evolution of connectivity and coprocessing of information of the two networks.