Tehran (IP)- An Iranian Ph.D. student in electronics at the Polytechnic University of Lausanne in Switzerland realized during a random observation that vanadium oxide behaves similarly to neurons.

Iran PressSci & Tech: Mohammad Samizadeh Niko, who completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at the Sharif University of Technology in Iran, announced his discovery in a T.V. interview. 

He says about his observation and discovery: "When I was randomly doing experiments on a substance called vanadium oxide, I observed a behavior similar to the conduct of neurons. Vanadium is metal, and after being oxidized, it turns into vanadium oxide. 

This substance can be produced in the laboratory. Vanadium oxide can show neuron-like activation because it can pass electric current under certain conditions. We discovered that these activation conditions are related to the past vanadium oxide and previous activations. This is precisely what happens in our brains.

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When we recognize a person, a series of neurons are activated, and memory is formed in our brain. When we meet the same person again, those neurons can be activated much faster and with less energy; this is how we recognize the person. 

Samizadeh says about the application of his discovery in artificial intelligence: "Hardware production is a crucial step. In the past, they tried to simulate the behaviors of neurons with transistors. But the specific behavior of the transistor is far from the neuron.

For this reason, the dimensions of the systems were huge, their accuracy was very low, and their energy consumption was very high. "But this electronic switch itself works very similar to neurons and is, therefore, a perfect candidate for artificial intelligence." 

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