The science fiction of melding man and machine has played out for decades onscreen, from The Six Million Dollar Man to The Terminator. But the bionic hybrid age may well be flickering to life – real life – in the Calgary lab where scientists who made history fusing snail brain cells to a computer microchip six years ago are poised to try the same feat with human cells.

Professor Molly Shoichet (ChemE, IBBME), a biomedical researcher at the University of Toronto who holds the Canada research chair in tissue engineering, described a “growing momentum” in the bio-engineering field as collaboration increases between engineers, biologists, and surgeon scientists.

In this case, Professor Shoichet said the Calgary researchers “have made a strong case for what they achieved,” recording the activity of neurons. But she cautioned that the new paper involved only a small sample size of neurochip recordings, and these, she noted, were not based on mammalian brain cells, but mollusc neurons.

Follow the link to read the full article on The Globe and Mail website.