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Rat Mind Control

Posted by timothy on from the you-will dept.

Patrick Key writes "Well, not exactly mind control but scientists have taken rat training to a new level. By inserting electrodes into the brain of a rat, they're able to effectively control a rat to move forward, left and right. They used the brain area that processes whisker info for left/right control and the pleasure center for moving forward. All sorts of interesting implications- no mention of when a human version would be available. The feat is mentioned in an IEEE's Spectrum article here"

3 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Pentagon insists real rats not being used by dazed-n-confused · · Score: 5, Funny

    SatireWire did a take-off of this three months ago, back when it was topical.

  2. Only forwards, backwards, left and right? by PlazMatiC · · Score: 5, Funny

    All the other kids have mouse look now!

  3. Re:repost by foom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    no they *can't* do a simple search, because the "search engine" DOESN'T INDEX 3-LETTER WORDS. Go ahead, search for "rat", you won't find anything. Try searching for "rat mind", wow look at all those irrelevant articles because it conveniently ignored the "rat" part of the search. I really don't understand how the slashdot search engine can possibly pretend to be useful when it doesn't index 3-letter words. Half the interesting search terms "for nerds" are acronyms of 3 letters or less, not to mention the actual real words like rat.