Slashdot Mirror
Hybrid Robot Uses Rat Brain
CowboyRobot writes "After two recent stories of artificial brains used to control rats and one about MIT doing the reverse, NYTimes now has a piece on similar work done at Georgia Tech From the article:
"...the layer of rat neurons is grown over an array of electrodes that pick up the neurons' electrical activity. A computer analyzes the activity of the several thousand brain cells in real time to detect spikes produced by neurons firing near an electrode." But this time you can buy one for $3,000."
Wired to the Brain of a Rat, a Robot Takes On the World
By ANNE EISENBERG
The nerve center of a conventional robot is a microprocessor of silicon and metal. But for a robot under development at Georgia Tech, commands are relayed by 2,000 or so cells from a rat's brain.
A group led by a university researcher has created a part mechanical, part biological robot that operates on the basis of the neural activity of rat brain cells grown in a dish. The neural signals are analyzed by a computer that looks for patterns emitted by the brain cells and then translates those patterns into robotic movement. If the neurons fire a certain way, for example, the robot's right wheel rotates once.
The leader of the group, Steve M. Potter, a professor in the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at Georgia Tech, calls his creation a Hybrot, short for hybrid robot.
"It's very much a symbiosis," he said, "a digital computer and a living neural network working together."
Dr. Potter has been building the system of hardware, software, incubators and rat neurons that constitute the Hybrot since 1993, when he was a postdoctoral student at the California Institute of Technology. He and his group have not only introduced the neurons to the world outside their dish; the team has also closely monitored minute changes that take place in the shape and connections of the neurons as they are stimulated, using techniques like time-lapse photography and laser imaging.
Dr. Potter hopes that close observation of how brain cells behave as they are exposed to a world of sensation will help researchers understand the way small groups of neurons go about learning. "If the network begins to get better at a job," he said, "we will watch what changed within the network to allow it to do that."
Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw, laboratory chief and professor of neuroscience at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York at Albany, said that Dr. Potter's research could yield a simple system for exploring the capacity of neurons and circuits to change based on incoming activity.
"These changes could be analogues of what happens in learning," Dr. Wolpaw said. "You are dealing with neurons, the same tissue as in a brain," although in a different setting and with different circuitry. "Some things presumably are in common, for example, the neuron's capacity for plasticity," he said.
In Dr. Potter's hybrid system, the layer of rat neurons is grown over an array of electrodes that pick up the neurons' electrical activity. A computer analyzes the activity of the several thousand brain cells in real time to detect spikes produced by neurons firing near an electrode.
A silver three-wheeled model of the robot is commercially available through the Swiss robotics maker K-Team (www.k-team.com) for about $3,000 and is about the size of a hockey puck. It trundles along at a top speed of one meter per second.
"We assign a direction of movement, say, a step forward, that is automatically triggered by a pattern of spikes," said Thomas DeMarse, a former member of Dr. Potter's group who is an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. "Twenty of these patterns, for instance, means 20 rotations of the wheel."
As the robot moves, it functions as a sensory system, delivering feedback to the neurons through the electrodes. For example, Mr. DeMarse said, the robot has sensors for light and feeds electrical signals proportional to the light back to the electrodes. "We return information to the dish on the intensity of light as the robot gets closer and the light gets brighter."
The researchers monitor the activity of the neurons for new signals and new connections. Dr. Potter said that the feedback mechanism was crucial to the functioning of the neural network. In traditional, isolated cultured networks, he said, in which neurons are not connected to a body, the activity patterns of the neurons are la
You can buy a copy of the robot base they are using, but it doesn't include the cybernetic rat brain.
This space intentionally left blank.
What the hell do these people target rats that much ? don't mice do the trick too ?
Rats have much larger brains and visual pathways than do mice, so surgery and implants of bionic and biological devices is spatially easier. The advantage that mice have right now is the genetic resources and databases that currently are not available to the same extent as for rats.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Click here for story without registering.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
Sprinkled right through Cordwainer Smith's short stories written in the 1960s are altered animals and bio-computers. In particular one of his stories (I wish I could remember which one - "Think Blue, Count Two"?) mentions a computer made of "laminated mouse brain". Few things seem to happen today that weren't anticipated earlier by at least one sci-fi writer...
If you are looking for more information or a new perspective, check out the actual news release by Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech Researchers Use Lab Cultures to Control Robotic Device
Go Yellow Jackets!
Yes - the cells live in an incubator and are fed calf-serum enriched media. The incubator has enough O2 in it that the cells get oxygen through the media. The electrodes are on the bottom of the dish. It is also nowhere near anything close to working.
Actually, they were taken from a rat, they were just explanted on to a petri dish to grow. If you really want the details, they are taken from a live pup that was surgically removed from the mother's uterus - its called embronic cultures. Its also the only way to get decent rat cultures, so get used to it. And you are right, it is worth it.
with 2 wheels.
In soviet Russia, robot controll rat.
In Soviet Russia, Chernobyl goes boom.
In My Apartment, Staying up late working on paper SUCKS.
I Mean, it'd be nice if Natalie Portman was here... uh... SUCKING. But papers just SUCK. Now that Ive seen the matrix... I wonder if the Source was Open Source. I guess not... mostve been closed source - if it was open the anomaly would have been fixed.
DAMN.
Trinity is the SHIZNAT.
PROPS TO MATTS MOM.
This reminds me of previous posts of similar experiments involving eel and lamprey brains. So, this doesn't exactly seem like anything new. (Those other articles were from 2000 and 2001!) So it just seems like they used a rat brain instead of an eel or lamprey brain. Even having the "light sensor attraction" thing was done with the lampreys.
Karma: NaN