Talk about a mind meld. Researchers have hooked up living brain cells, grown in a petri dish, to a computer.

In what one researcher called "cellular alchemy," two different teams of scientists have reported transforming mouse and rat skin cells into brain cells of the type that's destroyed during multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and certain other disorders.

It turns out urine isn't just human waste. Chinese researchers have managed to reprogram kidney cells harvested from urine samples into neural cell progenitors - immature brain cells that can develop into various types of glial cells and neurons. Reprogramming cells has been done before, of course, but not with cells gleaned from urine and not via a method this direct (more on that in a moment). The technique could prove extremely helpful to those pursuing treatments for neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Brain-like computers could soon become a lot more common. Earlier this year, we heard about a project involving DARPA and IBM to create a functioning neurosynaptic chip, which works somewhat like a brain in the way it learns and remembers. Now MIT engineers have designed a chip that mimics the function of a synapse in the brain, in its ability to model specific communications among neurons. The new chip could help researchers study the brain, and it could be used in neural prosthetic devices such as artificial retinas.

Studying mental illnesses involves complex brain-monitoring technology to watch how neurons and large-scale brain components are functioning or malfunctioning. But researchers are increasingly getting out of their patients' heads, monitoring brain cells in petri dishes instead. This is possible with stem cells, and it could yield plenty of new avenues for psychiatric research.