If I worked for a cheese company, I’d be very worried right about now.
Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to fly a fighter plane.
The “brain”, grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists at the University of Florida. It was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds.
The brain-in-a-dish was DeMarse’ idea. To produce it, 25,000 neurones from a rat embryo 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.
I can imagine that things are going to be looking rather bleak for cats if these things become commonplace.
Tripler
December 8, 2004, 12:33am
3
These idiots !
Dear God, don’t they know they’re inventing the first series of Terminators?
Triplernow !!
I, for one, welcome our new super rat-brain masters.
It gets worse.
A USC biomedical engineer’s pioneering brain cell research has led directly to a patented system that is now being rolled out to stem gun violence on the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles.
The engineer is Theodore Berger, director of the USC Center for Neural Engineering, whose life’s work has deciphered the way in which nerve cells code messages to each other.
Berger is also a key researcher in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center.
A microphone surveillance system now is using his insights to recognize - instantly, and with high accuracy - the sound of a gunshot within a two-block radius.
The system can then locate, precisely, where the shot was fired, turn a camera to center the shooter in the camera viewfinder and make a 911 call to a central police station.
The police can then take control of the camera to track the shooter and dispatch officers to the scene.
Hey, that’s not so bad, right?
Wrong.
We’re boned, pure and simple.
I think I saw a petri dish in a captain’s uniform, on my last Delta flight. Those real
An_Arky
December 8, 2004, 12:44am
7
It’s good to know that most of us can and will be replaced by rat-neurones-in-a-dish.
Is is any worse than sand?
I find this absolutely astounding, amazing and some other a word to complete the alliterative trifecta.
I have to say that I had to check to make sure it was an Onion article or something, it just seemed so outrageously amazing to me.
Wow. Cool stuff.
I find this absolutely astounding, amazing and some other a word to complete the alliterative trifecta.
I have to say that I had to check to make sure it was an Onion article or something, it just seemed so outrageously amazing to me.
Wow. Cool stuff.
Astonishing.
At least, that’s what my petri dish told me to say.
:smack: See, the petri dishes are already smarter than me.
I’ve got some bad news for y’all -AM a rat’s brain in a dish!
BOW BEFORE ME!
Oh - and bring me some camembert, please!
Damn this is cool!
What I want to know is, how did it know it was supposed to fly it straight? I mean, what kind of stimulus did it receive to know that crashing was “wrong?”
LSLGuy
December 11, 2004, 11:25am
16
Selling computers to the Government is like selling guns to the Indians.
We’ll never learn.
Jurph
December 11, 2004, 12:11pm
17
I’m sure you mean “We’ll never earn less than 110% profit!”
Hey, if they got these rat brains to be able to control a pointing device on a PC, would that be a rat-brained-mouse?
