Brain in a jar can fly airplane?!?

[srobert]

How weird is that?:

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.

As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments.

“We’re interested in studying how brains compute,” said Thomas DeMarse, the UF professor of biomedical engineering who designed the study. “If you think about your brain, and learning and the memory process, I can ask you questions about when you were 5 years old and you can retrieve information. That’s a tremendous capacity for memory. In fact, you perform fairly simple tasks that you would think a computer would easily be able to accomplish, but in fact it can’t.”

...

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.

“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”

Although the brain currently is able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated aircraft in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to stormy, hurricane-force winds, the underlying goal is a more fundamental understanding of how neurons interact as a network, DeMarse said.

Link to whole article

 

[emw]

Quite interesting. I could see a tremendous impact to computing methodologies as well.

 

[apple2991]

Holy crap! It's amazing the things that happen literally within 2 miles of me. Yes, I live in Gainesville and I LOVE IT!

 

[srobert]

Interesting, promising but could be scary (sci-fi style)

At which point his experiment could become sentient or self-aware? ^_^

It might need some cosmic rays first or a radioactive spider or 2.

Imagine this little scenario:

Military personal are servicing a UAV (Unmanned reconnaissance aircraft) One of the technician pulls out the "brain-tube" flight computer from the aircraft for maintenance. They run a system diagnosis. The technician says to himself: "Crap, this one turned sentient. It's the second this week. We'll have to bring it back to the lab for formatting. Stick in a fresh dumb one in the meantime."

 

[tomato]

This is Funny...BUT TOTAL CRAP

I got a good laugh out of this one. RATs brains growing nuetrons ha ha ha.

Thanks for this post .... we need rat brains to fly planes.

With the cost of fuel skyrocketing we can eliminate the pilots and use rat brains.

What a cleaver marketing concept!

FLY RAT BRAIN AIRLINES.

WHY NOT PUT SOME RAT BRAINS IN AN ARMY TANK AND SEND IT TO IRAQ??

 

[Raid]

At which point his experiment could become sentient or self-aware?

Then at what point are we creating a new slave race? Interesting stuff, but I think this has more ethical issues than a 16 day old cluster of human cells... and we all know how easily people can agree on that one...

 

[Blue Velvet]

Into the mud, scum queen!



(Google it if you don't get the reference)

It was my first thought when I saw the thread title...

 

[rainman::|:|]

I got a good laugh out of this one. RATs brains growing nuetrons ha ha ha.

Thanks for this post .... we need rat brains to fly planes.

With the cost of fuel skyrocketing we can eliminate the pilots and use rat brains.

What a cleaver marketing concept!

FLY RAT BRAIN AIRLINES.

WHY NOT PUT SOME RAT BRAINS IN AN ARMY TANK AND SEND IT TO IRAQ??

You need to cut down on the caffeine. Seriously.

It's kind of sophomoric to get hung up about the fact that it's rat brain cells... they always use rat cells for neural net testing.

and this isn't intended to be a commercial venture... it's establishing a use for the neural network so it can be studied.

Autonomous tanks based on this are probably 20 years away, at least. and i agree with the statments above about ethical and logistical problems. Since we really don't understand why this works, we just know it does, unexpected results could arise. Kind of reminds me of Lovecraft's ideas on the slave race...

paul

 

[wdlove]

Very interesting research. Good to hear that it's a simulated unmanned plane. In the future it could be of real assistance with unmanned planes for the Defense Department. Could also be helpful for space flight that are unmanned.

 

[Apple Hobo]

This is both interesting and creepy. New! Disposable brain in a can! The possibilities are limitless.

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

the beginning of the end , can you imagine an entire army of sentient robots running amok? this is good for research but it's like the development of the nuclear...that was real beneficial .

 

[J.Allen]

Quite interesting. I could see a tremendous impact to computing methodologies as well.

Orgain computing. When you say your computer just died. It may well have

 

[Abstract]

This is weird, but how accurate are the input signals? What are they, exactly? Are they the same signals that are delivered when a living human, or even a living mouse, sees a situation with his eyes and sends the signal to his brain?

 

[Roger1]

This sounds like something out of Futurama
link:http://pawell13.by.ru/tlz/grabs/2acv03/203-40.jpg

 

[Colonel Panik]

Yeah I love it. I can see people getting brain attachments in the future. Not smart enough? Here are cloned neurons from -very smart people-. Just make a hole in your skull and pop in the extra brain.

iBrain.

Actually, when I first heard the term iPod, I thought of alien life forms...

What a Christmas present... wow.

 

[crazzyeddie]

Wow... imagine if this sort of stuff could be applied to high-demand computing... like that IBM commercial, the server can automatically repair itself.

 

[broken_keyboard]

And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time

This is the scary part for me - the fact that the mere things you see or hear are modifying your brain. It's obviously true - how else would you remember anything? But still - it's an interesting variation on "you are what you eat." You are what you see and hear.