Lipid Bilayers as Platforms for Understanding Biological Memory and the Development of Neuromorphic Computing

The structure of the plasma membrane (PM) has been undergoing continuous evolution for the greater part of 100 years. It is also well understood that the underlying organizing structure of the PM is the lipid bilayer. Recently, it was shown that the lipid bilayer can behave as a memory capacitor, or memcapacitor, exhibiting pinched hysteresis loops when plotting charge vs voltage, features of memcapacitive systems. Considering that lipids makeup more than 50% of the brainÓ³ dry weight, our data support the interpretation that the PM may be a supramolecular repository of biological memory. This chapter discusses recent results supporting this line of thinking.