Robot Controlled By Rat Neurons

In some of the weirder news I've read lately, New Scientist Tech is reporting on a set of experiments being conducted at the University of Reading in the UK that involve using rat neurons to control a specialized robot. The neurons—about 300,000 of them—are in a nutrient-and-antibiotic bath in a control unit that controls the robot wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Because these are living cells, scientists are unable to program the robot. Instead, they are working on training it by sending electrical signals into the neurons in response to certain actions the robot takes. For example, an ultrasonic sensor on the robot can detect walls and other obstacles, and the brain cells receive an electrical input to let them know the wall is there. So far, they have "taught" the brain to avoid obstacles with about 80 percent reliability (another researcher at Georgia Tech has taught his robot to avoid obstacles with 90 percent reliability).

The results of this research could be interesting, in terms of re-training brains damaged by accidents, strokes, or diseases and allowing people who are currently disabled to live more active lives.

But could it also lead to rat brain-controlled robots taking over the world? That seems unlikely, but if it ever happens we can just give the robots mad cow (rat?) disease or Alzheimer's.

Better Understanding of the Brain

Popular Science details new initiatives that have created, for the first time ever, virtual maps of neural connections in the human brain. The maps—created in two separate studies—used a brain scanning technique called "diffusion imaging," which can be easily done on living, breathing human beings. The method involves following the flow of water molecules along the axons—long fibers of nerve cells—in a subject's brain.

The two teams used basically the same technique to create their maps, one of which is higher resolution than the other, and both found the same clusters of connections in the cerebral cortex, in a region of the brain that uses the most oxygen and glucose, especially when the brain is at rest.

The results of this research will undoubtedly lead to a much greater understanding of the organization and function of the brain, which could lead eventually to better treatments for mental illnesses, paralysis, and brain damage, as well as to such future technologies as mind-machine interfaces.

Method Developed for Mapping Neural Connections

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have developed a new method for identifying all of the connections to a single neuron in the human brain. Researchers have said they won’t be able to understand the brain until they can put together a map of how billions of neurons are interconnected.

The Salk researchers identified the connections by modifying the deadly rabies virus, turning it into a tool that can cross the synaptic space of a targeted nerve cell just once to identify all the neurons to which it is directly connected.

With luck and given time, neural science researchers will be able to map all of the connections in the human brain, which will lead to a better understanding of how the brain--and hopefully, human thought and sensory perception--works.