An artificial synapse for interfacing to biological neurons

This work details CMOS, bio-inspired circuits that are used to link an artificial neuron and a living neuron and between two living neurons. We read an intracellular signal from a living neuron, use an integrate-and-fire neuron as a simple processing element to detect the spikes, and an artificial synapse to send outputs to a living neuron. The key structure is an electronic synapse which is based around a floating-gate pFET. The charge on the floating-gate is analogous to the synaptic weight and can be modified. This modification can be viewed as similar to LTP and LTD. Since programming technology has greatly improved, these weights can be set quickly and accurately