Researchers make a “diffusive” memristor that emulates how a real synapse work

Memristors are fascinating. Here's my question: How much do biologists understand about how synaptic systems work in living organisms? In other words, is this more likely to be helpful to people studying how memories and thoughts are created and retained in living organisms, or is this more likely to be helpful to people studying how to make artificial systems behave more like organic systems?

I was surprised today that the entry on Wikipedia still qualifies the memristor as &quot;hypothetical&quot;, and says that &quot;there are...some serious doubts as to whether the memristor can actually exist in physical reality&quot;.<p>I thought maybe research was farther along than that.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Memristor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Memristor</a>

It is an interesting result but until it is connected with a system that can implement the other parts of learning we&#x27;re left with a model of a neuron. Back in the 90&#x27;s when neural networks were the big thing the first time people built what they considered to be very accurate neuron models connected together into networks as a way of building a system.<p>While this gives you a way to do that in hardware, and so potentially much faster and denser than the software systems, the missing bit is the system when connects these things together and feeds them inputs and pulls off outputs such that the system can be trained. Still looking for that paper.