disembodied rat neurons are thinking about flying an F-22

Dedman · Post by **Dedman** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:15 am

Ran across this, thought it was way cool, and so I am sharing. Does this raise ethical, "terminator" and "Skynet" types of questions?

By Lakshmi Sandhana
02:00 AM Oct. 23, 2004 PT

Somewhere in Florida, 25,000 disembodied rat neurons are thinking about flying an F-22.

These neurons are growing on top of a multi-electrode array and form a living "brain" that's hooked up to a flight simulator on a desktop computer. When information on the simulated aircraft's horizontal and vertical movements are fed into the brain by stimulating the electrodes, the neurons fire away in patterns that are then used to control its "body" -- the simulated aircraft.

"It's as if the neurons control the stick in the aircraft, they can move it back and forth and left and right," said Thomas DeMarse, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida who has been working on the project for more than a year. "The electrodes allow us to record the activity from the neurons and stimulate them so we can listen to the conversation among the neurons and also input information back into the neural network."

Currently the brain has learned enough to be able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated F-22 fighter jet in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to hurricane-force winds. Initially the aircraft drifted, because the brain hadn't figured out how to control its "body," but over time the neurons learned to stabilize the aircraft to a straight, level flight.

"Right now the process it's learning is very simplistic," said DeMarse. "It's basically making a decision about whether to move the stick to the left or to the right or forwards and backwards and it learns how much to push the stick depending upon how badly the aircraft is flying."

The seed idea for DeMarse's autopilot came out of earlier work with Steve Potter on the Animat project, where researchers used living rat neurons to control an animated object in a virtual world. They also connected the neurons to a robot and tried to teach the brain to track and approach objects.

The bigger goal is to figure out how neurons talk to each other. MRI scans, for example, show millions of neurons firing together. At that resolution, it is impossible to see what's happening between individual neurons. While scientists can study neural activities from groups of cells in a dish, they can't watch them learn and grow as they would within a living body unless the neurons have some kind of body to interact with.

By taking these cells and giving them back a "body," the researchers hope to uncover how the neurons communicate with each other and eventually translate that knowledge to develop novel computing architecture.

"Granted, this is just a handful of neurons in a dish," said Potter, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech's neuroengineering laboratory. "It isn't a full-blown brain. It doesn't have a real body. But with this kind of system you can literally watch these things compute and you have a chance to learn how the brain does its computation."

DeMarse plans to make the autopilot more competent by having the brain use a horizon to judge how it controls the plane. But the true breakthrough will come about when the researchers detect how neurons communicate in a network.

"We know some of the rudimentary rules," said DeMarse. "We just don't quite understand the language that they use to do their computations. We can extract the general features from it to control the aircraft but there's a lot more information buried in the signals that they are using, and we simply don't know what that is. So there's a lot more to do in terms of understanding the language of the network."

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:48 am

i don't have much of a problem with the ethics of this, because they are not concentrating so much on teaching the neurons howto fly, so much as the major point in the exersise is to study how neurons communicate with eachtother and compute data.

exciting

Dedman · Post by **Dedman** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:59 am

If they are successful in learning how neurons learn and communicate, what is the next step?

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:01 am

next step is writing books about what they have learned.

do you have any idea how useful this kindof information will be to doctors?

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:17 am

The next step is THE BORG!

Dedman · Post by **Dedman** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:29 am

roid wrote:do you have any idea how useful this kindof information will be to doctors?

I agree with you. I am just playing devil's advocate to get some conversation going.

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:48 am

blegh. you don't need opposing sides for a conversation.
i could happily talk what-ifs all day. love it

neurons arn't just in the brain. the things they learn from this could drasticly put forward sensing and electronic messaging technologies as well. as we learn more about neurons, not just in the brain but in our nervous system as well.

if we even get to the stage where cybernetic implants are warrented. they don't need to be connected to the brain, and they probably won't even need to be "wired in" in the way we think of wires currently. If we can study the process of intra and inter neuron communication well enough we may learn enough to be able to influence the process from a non invasive distance.

you could put on shoes that can teach you german.
or gloves that give you a 6th sense.

heresay heresay, get it while it's fresh

bash · Post by **bash** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:45 am

Amazingly cool story.

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:15 pm

O NOZ, rOID HAZ TEH MIND CONTROL PLANZ!!1

Seriosly, WTF would you want anything to be able to interact directly with your brain? What if the thing crashes and takes your toilet training down with it? What happens when viruses no longer ★■◆● with your PC, but your actual brain?

index_html · Post by **index_html** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:51 pm

What if the thing crashes and takes your toilet training down with it?

Hehe, that was good.

I think it's fascinating. In related news, I recently read this story about merging snail nerve cells and microchips that's interesting:

CALGARY (CP) -- Researchers at the University of Calgary have found that nerve cells grown on a microchip can learn and memorize information which can be communicated to the brain.

"We discovered that when we used the chip to stimulate the neurons, their synaptic strength was enhanced," said Naweed Syed, a neurobiologist at the University of Calgary's faculty of medicine.

The nerve cells also exhibited memory traces that were successfully read by the chip, said Syed, co-author of the landmark study published in February's edition of Physical Review Letters, an international journal.

The research was done in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich, Germany.

The team cultured nerve cells from a snail and placed them on a specially designed silicon chip. Using a microcapacitor on the chip, scientists stimulated one nerve cell to communicate with a second cell which transmitted that signal to multiple cells within the network.

A transistor located on the chip then recorded that conversation between cells.

Syed said the discovery is groundbreaking.

"We've made a giant leap in answering several fundamental questions of biology and neuro-electronics that will pave the way for us to harness the power of nanotechnology," he said.

The findings could help in the design of devices that combine electronic components and brain cells. That includes controlling artificial limbs or restoring sight for the visually impaired.

Future research will focus on interfacing silicon chips with the human brain to control artificial limbs and develop "thinking" computers. <-_->

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:17 pm

I have absolutely no problem with using rat brains to control machines. Go for it ...

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:40 pm

Dedman wrote:Somewhere in Florida, 25,000 disembodied rat neurons are thinking about flying an F-22.

Owned by a rat brain (and not even one half of it).. I don't know.

Flatlander · Post by **Flatlander** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:54 pm

Hook me up, I wanna be a wirehead!!!11

Dedman · Post by **Dedman** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:28 pm

Of course, those of us in the airline biz are saying Pilots=rats. So why do we have to pay them so much if part of a rat brain could do their jobs.

Viralphrame · Post by **Viralphrame** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:31 pm

Resistance is futile.

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:18 pm

Dedman wrote:If they are successful in learning how neurons learn and communicate, what is the next step?

Cloning them onto silicon Carbide or schmarmarmalade-bide, so you can grow new ones from your own twin's stem cells, "sorry bud your just my spare party liver."

Rabid Bots?

Mad cow chips?

Lends itself to a whole world of viri where sneezing on your chips may actually cause blue screens?

Hmmm...

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:25 pm

Canuck wrote:Lends itself to a whole world of viri where sneezing on your chips may actually cause blue screens?

LOL

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:36 pm

Military might be interested in this... fighters that fly themselves...

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 12:36 am

Sirius wrote:Military might be interested in this... fighters that fly themselves...

....

Dedman wrote:Does this raise ethical, "terminator" and "Skynet" types of questions?

...little late there genius

Pay attention

I have no problem with the ethics of this either as long as we make sure that we maintain complete control of these types of technologies as they grow. My only concern is that we usually don't and this kind of stuff comes back to bite us in the ass eventually. Especially if the military took a great interest in it, which I'm sure they probably have.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 4:19 am

I have a problem with it. We didn't build the logic gates. What happens when this thing decides "I don't wanna"?

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 5:36 am

Mr. Perfect wrote:O NOZ, rOID HAZ TEH MIND CONTROL PLANZ!!1

Seriosly, WTF would you want anything to be able to interact directly with your brain? What if the thing crashes and takes your toilet training down with it? What happens when viruses no longer **** with your PC, but your actual brain?

Go see Ghost In The Shell

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:11 am

Word, go see Ghost in the Shell the orignal, I havnt seen the new one yet (downloaded a month ago and still sitting on the HDD heh...). And while your at it, get Stand Alone Complex on DVD, its good.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:16 am

Vertigo wrote:
Mr. Perfect wrote:O NOZ, rOID HAZ TEH MIND CONTROL PLANZ!!1

Seriosly, WTF would you want anything to be able to interact directly with your brain? What if the thing crashes and takes your toilet training down with it? What happens when viruses no longer **** with your PC, but your actual brain?

Go see Ghost In The Shell

weird, i watched that last night....

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 1:22 pm

Roid, whenever you link to your site, it's never the article you're mentioning. I've never found the articles you've referenced in your postings.

This time I was dropped off at a page about training squirrels and a homemade cannon.

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 2:13 pm

It's Roid we're talking about here. Think about that for a second.

bash · Post by **bash** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 3:36 pm

Does the cannon use squirrels as ammo? Or do they shoot the squirrels with the cannon? Or perhaps it is the squirrels that are manning (or squirrelling, to be precise) the cannon. Either way, another way cool story. :thumbup:

roid · Post by **roid** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 8:53 am

oh sorry, i was just linking zzzonline (not a particular article), coz i often write for them. i linked it in relation to "what-ifs", coz we like "what-ifs" at zzzonline

.

testi you've never seen the articles i link? urg, you should have said something earlier, maybe i'm doing something wrong. i normally DO link to a particular article, but it didn't this time, i was linking the "vibe"

.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:44 pm

I wish those disembodied rat neurons would teach me how to play F-22 Lightning 3. I find it impossible to evade enemy missiles in that game; multi-billion dollar lawn dart, anyone?