Posts: Links / Rat brain flies jet with video

Ah neural computation. How I loved to hate to love you. It's very cool that we have moved from modeling the cells computationally and integrating them into mechanical devices to actually putting the cells themselves into the mechanics. This demos what I imagine (and hope) to be a really huge leap in biotech and neuroscience. It will also frighten a whole lot of bioethics people which is always a good thing.

The demo does still only compute a very basic mathematical problem - that is, it takes the input signals and then compares them to the desired ideal output signal (or "training" signal) - in this case keeping the plane in the air. This type of problem has been modeled computationally using virtual neurons for many years now.

If we think of an organism like an F-22; this seems to be all we need. Our input signal is our sensory inputs - visual, auditory, somatosensory etc. While our desired output signal would be a regulated body temperature, heart rate, equilibrium, ability to acquire food, sex, etc. It's all that messy stuff in between that is the hard part to compute. ie. how do we interpret the input signals in the first place, and what exactly in the brain is serving as the feedback loop.

At any rate, super interesting stuff, and one of my favourite parts of psychology to think about.

Me again. It would be neat if someone could do this exact same demo without relying on putting electrodes directly into the neurons, and instead relied solely on a chemically based feedback loop (for example a dopaminergic system).

Spazdaq, this is also pretty much what is going on inside your brain while you play Call of Duty. It took 25,000 rat brain cells to fly the F-22, I wonder how many cells are reorganizing their firing patterns so that you can pwn a noob with super L337 grenade spams? Something to think about before bed.

i dont grenade spam.
when i die, virginia says she is going to put my brain in a jar by the bed and hook it up to call of duty. she said it will be like i am there.

hahahahaa

Why is there techno music over this video?