|
|
A Franken robot with a biological brain |
|
Aug 13 03:25 PM US/Eastern
We have an article from four years ago on this website where rat’s
brains were used to fly flight simulators. Here we see how this has now
progressed into rats brains being used to control robots
now. Two weeks ago we were sent very
disturbing links to a military robotic vehicle that is called big dog. We have little doubt that locked away in some
underground bunker there are those that are seeking to harness human brain
cells to be used to control a variety of battlefield weapon systems and
applications.
Meet
Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain
tissue.
Stitched together from cultured rat neurons,
Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the
Their groundbreaking experiments explore the
vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed
light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the
lead researchers told AFP.
"The purpose is to figure out how memories
are actually stored in a biological brain," said Kevin Warwick, a
professor at the
Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a
network as they fire off electrical impulses, he said, may also help scientists
combat neurodegenerative diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's.
"If we can understand some of the basics of
what is going on in our little model brain, it could
have enormous medical spinoffs," he said.
Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of
the blockbuster animation "Wall-E", Gordon has a brain composed of
50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.
Once removed from rat foetuses
and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised
nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre (five-by-five inch) array of 60 electrodes.
This "multi-electrode array" (MEA)
serves as the interface between living tissue and machine, with the brain
sending electrical impulses to drive the wheels of the robots, and receiving
impulses delivered by sensors reacting to the environment.
Because the brain is living tissue, it must be
housed in a special temperature-controlled unit -- it communicates with its
"body" via a Bluetooth radio link.
The robot has no additional control from a human
or computer.
From the very start, the neurons get busy.
"Within about 24 hours, they start sending out feelers to each other and
making connections," said
"Within a week we get some spontaneous
firings and brain-like activity" similar to what happens in a normal rat
-- or human -- brain, he added.
But without external stimulation, the brain will
wither and die within a couple of months.
"Now we are looking at how best to teach it
to behave in certain ways," explained
To some extent, Gordon learns by itself. When it
hits a wall, for example, it gets an electrical stimulation from the robot's
sensors. As it confronts similar situations, it learns by habit.
To help this process along, the researchers also
use different chemicals to reinforce or inhibit the neural pathways that light
up during particular actions.
Gordon, in fact, has multiple personalities --
several MEA "brains" that the scientists can dock into the robot.
"It's quite funny -- you get differences
between the brains," said
Mainly for ethical reasons, it is unlikely that
researchers at
But rats brain cells are
not a bad stand-in: much of the difference between rodent and human
intelligence, speculates
Rats brains are composed of about one million neurons, the specialised cells that relay information across the brain
via chemicals called neurotransmitters.
Humans have 100 billion.
"This is a simplified version of what goes on
in the human brain where we can look -- and control -- the basic features in
the way that we want. In a human brain, you can't really do that," he
said.
For colleague Ben Whalley,
one of the fundamental questions facing scientists today is how to link the
activity of individual neurons with the overwhelmingly complex behaviour of whole organisms.
"The project gives us a unique opportunity to
look at something which may exhibit complex behaviours,
but still remain closely tied to the activity of individual neurons," he
said.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1