Flying By Brain

Garabito writes "Scientists at the University of Florida made a living 'brain' by extracting 25,000 neurons from a rat's brain and culturing them inside a glass dish. Then, the neurons began to extend lines to each other, creating a living neural network between them. The dish had a grid of 60 electrodes connected to a computer running a flight simulator. The scientists were able to train the 'brain' to control the plane in the simulator and to react to conditions of the plane. Are we getting closer to create an artificially made conscious being, or perhaps, a living computer?" AlphaJoe was one of several readers to add a link to Wired's article on the experiment.

Comments

Does this......?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this freak the shit out of anyone else?

Re:One question...

[ajna]

The parent post is simplistic and misinformed. Here's why:

Point 1: This isn't a brain we're talking about, it's 25,000 neurons in a dish that has a grid of electrodes on the bottom, so whatever structure has come to being is unlikely to resemble that of a brain except that it's made up of neurons which synapse on other neurons.

Point 2: Pleasure and pain are not localized in the brain. You can feel many different kinds of pain (visceral via sympathetic nervous system vs. somatic, for instance) and can feel each of these kinds of pain at different regions in the body (and thus different groups of neurons in the brain). I imagine the same holds true for pleasure, with different neurotransmitter pathways involved for each.

About the grandparent, that's exactly what I wondered too, and I couldn't find any pertinent info in the two articles either. The two following paragraphs are what I find to be very handwavy and suspect:

"Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn't know how to control the aircraft," DeMarse said.

"So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft."

Something is wrong here

[felonius maximus]

Despite finding this technology exciting, I also find myself feeling quite disturbed by it.

There are certainly some amazing opportunities here to learn about how brains work, and no doubt this could help us in building better interfaces for cybernetic implants.

I just feel very uncomfortable with this kind of experimentation. It is my understanding that given enough complexity, any system has the potential to become self-aware. This plate has 25,000 neurons in a roughly two-dimensonal matrix (from the Wired article), so it's probably not even as smart as a bug so far (I am just guessing about this, does anyone have figures to compare this to?), but given enough space and time, might it not become sentient?

This reminds me of a similar experiment involving a fish brain controlling a robot. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1043001.stm

Then again - maybe I am being squeamish for no reason. After all, if your entire existence was flying imaginary planes, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

Re:Just because we can?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you define "consciousness". Is an atom conscious? Chemical compound? Chemical reactions? A cell? 10 connected cells? 25,000 connected cells?

Is it when something that can 'learn'? We have computer programs that can learn.
Is something suddenly conscious when it neurons are connected? You have neurons in your leg, is your leg conscious?

Is it something can react with the enviroment? Sperm can react with the enviroment, is it conscious?

Define what it is you are actually against. They got a bunch of cells, and made it send electrical signals in a certin way.

As you say "a wise society is one that can do something, yet chooses not to and offers their reasoning for others to contemplate." But you have offered not reasoning other than to say YOU can't ethically deal with a bunch of cells sending electrochemical reactions to a few other cells and a computer.

Personally I would happly give them 25,000 of my some 100 billion neurons (In my brain alone) if it means that in the future someone who has brain damage can have their brain repaired and have their life go back to normal.

No, because we want to.

[Rui del-Negro]

I believe in the "sanctity" of "life", and I think it's wrong to put one person's heart inside another person's chest. If you want to give someone a working heart, fine, but grow one "from scratch". I "know" transplants are just "wrong".

I believe in the "sanctity" of "life", and I think it's wrong to give one person the blood of another. If you need blood to save someone's life, then create blood "from scratch". I "know" transfusions are just "wrong".

I believe in the "sanctity" of "life", and I think it's wrong to perform artificial insemination. If you want to help people who are trying to have children, you should er... create a child from scratch? Or maybe just pray for them (a lot)? Anyway, I "know" IVF is just "wrong".

Guess what, creating those things "from scratch" is very, very hard. And assuming someone put the time and effort into it and created them, what then? A neuron would still be a neuron, whether it came from a brain or from a test tube. And if your problem is with the (abstract) "mind", then how do you manage to turn off your PC? A modern computer, running a modern OS, displays more "intelligent" behaviour than many insects. Is a "mind" any less "sacred" if it's silicon-based, instead of carbon-based?

These experiments are very much right, and should have been done a long time ago. Modern medicine can do amazing things with muscle and bone and skin, but nearly all nervous and neural diseases are impossible to cure or even treat. A lot more research is needed.

Neurons are no more "sacred" than any other cell type (spermatozoons, for example). In fact, millions of both are wasted every second.