Iran produces lab-grown artificial brain

Iran has produced a laboratory-scale artificial brain using living human neurons that form learning-capable neural networks, a senior official said, marking the country's entry into the emerging global race for organoid intelligence technology. 

Ataollah Pour-Abbasi, secretary of the cognitive sciences and technologies development taskforce, told Mehr news agency that Iran has acquired the technical knowledge to culture nerve cells outside the body, where they create synapses and build networks that can learn, just as they do inside the brain, MNA reported.

"This is the foundation for developing computer processors based on brain cells," he said, adding that a knowledge-based company has already produced an experimental prototype.

Pour-Abbasi said the technology offers two transformative advantages: massively increased processing speed and energy consumption reduced by up to a million times compared with conventional silicon chips. "These two advantages have made the shift toward cell-based processors a global need and priority."

While Iran is still some distance from commercialisation, he stressed that the full technical knowledge, from start to finish, has now been acquired domestically. "Our country is moving at the same pace as other leading nations in acquiring this technical know-how," he said.

Organoid intelligence, also called biological processing, uses living human neurons to build computational systems that mimic the brain's extraordinary ability to process information in parallel using minimal energy.