Rat Brains fly Jet
 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12...ain_flies_jet/


Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to fly a fighter plane.

Scientists at the university of Florida taught the 'brain', which was grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a rat embryo, to pilot an F-22 jet simulator. It was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds.

"When we first hooked them up, the plane 'crashed' all the time," Dr Thomas DeMarse, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, said. "But over time, the neural network slowly adapts as the brain learns to control the pitch and roll of the aircraft. After a while, it produces a nice straight and level trajectory."

The brain-in-a-dish was DeMarse' idea. To produce it, 25,000 rat neurones were suspended in a specialised liquid to keep them alive and then laid across a grid of 60 electrodes in a small glass dish.

The cells at first looked like grains of sand under the microscope, but soon began to connect to form what scientists call a "live computation device" (a brain). Electrodes monitor and stimulate neural activity in this network, allowing researchers to study how the brain processes and transfers information.

The scientists hope that their research will lead to hybrid computers with organic components, allowing more flexible and varied means of solving problems.

One potential application is to install living computers in unmanned aircraft for missions too dangerous for humans. It is also hoped that further advances will help in the search for cures for conditions such as epilepsy, The Age reports.

"The algorithms that living computers use are also extremely fault-tolerant," Dr DeMarse said. "A few neurons die off every day in humans without any noticeable drop in performance, and yet if the same were to happen in a traditional silicon-based computer the results would be catastrophic."

The US National Science Foundation has awarded the team a $500,000 grant to produce a mathematical model of how the neurons compute. ®

Re: Rat Brains fly Jet
 

This can only end in awesome

Re: Rat Brains fly Jet
 

I know Sony has been working on this technology for a few years. They want extremly powerful AI for videogames. Watched a video where a suit said something like "We hope to bring the first video game system that requires feeding"

Re: Rat Brains fly Jet
 

dude skynet had this all figured out in T4 with their robot peoples. duh.

Re: Rat Brains fly Jet
 

I find this unpossible to believe. Its got to be fantasty or propaganda...

How are the cells supplied with oxygen and nutrients to sustain mitochondrial activity? The brain needs a vast and continous oxygenated blood supply and it gobbles up energy... even on such a tiny scale.

Also, learning is a mental process that requires the interaction between regions of the brain. Why would cells in a petri dish be compelled to learn? In what ways could operant learning be applied? Certainly no sophisticated cognition could occur without the complex features of a brain and a frame of reference with which to compare, eg. "What is too left or too right or too up or too down."

I'm calling bullshit...