The State of Current Technology
Currently we can scan a section of tissue about 2 micrometers thick by
electron microscope tomography. The largest sample area that could be
imaged is about 1 square millimeter. Neuroscience is making steady
progress at understanding how real neurons perform mental functions.
Software for automatically interpreting the micrographs is still
primitive, but getting better. Computing capacity is sufficient for our
scanning technology; the largest storage devices currently measure in the
terabytes (i.e. millions of megabytes). In manufacturing technology,
researchers are starting to experiment with three-dimensional techniques
that might eventually lead to neurocomputer fabrication (see, for example,
Curtis 1993).
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Joe Strout