A computer that relies on fungal mycelium to store information could one day be a low-cost alternative to the current generation of memory hardware.

Using plain old shiitake mushrooms ( Lentinula edodes ), scientists have built working memristors – circuitry elements that 'remember' their past electrical states – not from titanium dioxide or silicon, but the root-like (and somewhat neuron-like ) part of a fungus called the mycelium .

The result is a memristor with performance comparable to that of a silicon-based chip, but potentially low-cost, scalable, and environmentally friendly in ways many computer components today are not.

Related: Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body And Let It Run Wild

"Being able to develop microchips that mimic actual neural activity means y

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