Altering Memories with Mushrooms

Some people like mushrooms on their pizza, while others are sane, well-adjusted individuals that opt to forgo chewing on slimy pieces of fungus. But unfortunately for the fungophobe, avoiding mushrooms in the future may be more difficult than just placing the right pizza order. These fungal fiends may even start sprouting up in our computers one day — or at least that is what a group of researchers at Ohio State University thinks.

The next generation of green computing

According to the team, mushrooms might soon help power the next generation of eco-friendly computers. They discovered that common edible fungi, such as shiitake and button mushrooms, can be “trained” to act as organic memristors, electronic components that process and store data much like the synapses in the human brain. Their findings demonstrated that these mushroom-based systems can mimic key features of semiconductor chips while being far cheaper, greener, and more sustainable.

In traditional electronics, memristors are known for their ability to remember previous electrical states. This property makes them important in neuromorphic computing, a field that aims to replicate the efficiency and adaptability of the human brain in hardware. Conventional memristors, however, depend on rare-earth metals and energy-intensive manufacturing processes.

To coax mushrooms into doing the job, the team grew mycelial networks (thread-like root systems that form the body of fungi) from shiitake and button mushrooms. Once the fungi matured, the researchers dehydrated them for long-term stability and connected them to electronic circuits. When exposed to varying voltages and frequencies, the mushrooms exhibited memristive behavior, switching between electrical states up to 5,850 times per second with about 90% accuracy. These properties make them a good candidate for use in organic memory chips capable of learning from electrical signals, much like biological neurons.

Advantages of fungal electronics

Beyond their computational abilities, the biological nature of these fungal memristors provides some significant advantages. They are biodegradable, low-cost, and non-toxic, reducing electronic waste and the environmental impact of chip production. The fungi can even withstand extreme conditions, hinting at potential uses in aerospace electronics or space exploration.

Shiitake mushrooms in particular show promise because of their radiation resistance — a trait linked to compounds such as lentinan, which help the fungus survive environmental stress. This robustness makes them ideal for applications in harsh environments where conventional electronics would quickly degrade.

The researchers envision scaling their system for various uses, from edge computing and wearable electronics to autonomous systems that can learn from their surroundings. Though the technology is still in its infancy, the mushroom could one day become a key component in green computing. Whether or not people want to own a computer with a “Fungus Inside” label has yet to be determined.