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Biologically-Inspired Electronics with Memory Circuit Elements

Several abilities of biological systems, such as adaptation to natural environment, or of animals to learn patterns when appropriately trained, are features that are extremely useful, if emulated by electronic circuits, in applications ranging from robotics to solution of complex optimization problems, traffic control, etc. In this chapter, we discuss several examples of biologically-inspired circuits that take advantage of memory circuit elements, namely, electronic elements whose resistive, capacitive or inductive characteristics depend on their past dynamics. We provide several illustrations of what can be accomplished with these elements including learning circuits and related adaptive filters, neuromorphic and cellular computing circuits, analog massively-parallel computation architectures, etc. We also give examples of experimental realizations of memory circuit elements and discuss opportunities and challenges in this new field.