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Backyard Brains Can Help Satisfy Your Inner Frankenstein (Video)
Did you know that cockroaches have such large nerves in their legs that you can poke into their legs almost at random and hit a nerve with an electrode so you can stimulate that leg with hip-hop music and and watch it move? And that you can easily order the parts to do this at home or at school? You can. And supplies to perform many other neuroscience experiments, too. Amaze your friends! Learn how neurons work! Gross out squeamish people! All that (and more) is what Backyard Brains is about.
Damn, that's really neat.
This is one of those times I wished I lived in the U.S... We just don't get such nice stuff by mail order in Europe.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Sticking an electrode into a creature and have it twitching to music is not funny, it's cruel.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Didn't Dexter get started with stuff like this? In 20 years there will be some kid suing /. because he read this article and turned into a serial killer.
sudo make me a sandwich
At first the animal lover in me was wondering about the ethics of randomly cutting apart cockroaches without any clear scientific benefit outside of learning (at least dissections tend to teach more than one person - disclaimer, I was on a human subject review board for scientific studies at my college). However it looks like they go out of their way to actually keep everything humane. And, its also important to note that the cockroaches are anesthetized, and their legs do in fact grow back. They get a thumbs up!
Current science is wrong.
Unbelievable.
If current science = wrong
and unproven thought = believable
therefor non-science = truth!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
How do i block these kind of stories in adblock?
I did a quick search and I can't find any of the usual groups complaining about this. Apparently they are all fine with pulling legs off cockroaches and zapping them, damn hippocrits. I bet if I did the same to the neighbor's cat I could make its leg twitch too....
I know it has yet to be tested, but it works.
The evidence is strong with this one!
Unbelievable, because he's wrong.
Did you know that nerds have such large deficiencies in their brains that you can post Slashdot articles almost at random so you can stimulate that advertising revenue with advertisements disguised as badly edited articles and watch them squirm? And that you can easily order the editors to do this at home or at work? You can. And supplies to perform many other psychology experiments, too. Amaze your investors! Learn how marketing works! Alienate your readers! All that (and more) is what Slashvertisement is about.
Imperio!
Just you wait, someone will use this to film and upload a dubstep roach video.
This is really cool, but OMG these guys should never be on video doing a sales pitch! There are hot nerd girls in the world who would be 1000 times better at doing this. Yes, the science is cool, but the marketing sucks.
you're not actually going to tell me that the two highest rated posts right now are two morons wringing their hands about cruelty to cockroaches
if we're going to talk about proportionality, scale, and context in your "morality", do your brains undergo nuclear fission when viewing the youtube video of the kids massacred in houla?
now, of course, a reply to my post will be a lecture about how horrible homo sapiens is, so little kids deserve to be massacred, it doesn't matter, but cockroaches are beautiful creatures full of love and feeling
fuck it, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em:
can we repeat this experiment with the leg of a PETA member?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Care to back that up? From what I read the process works. In fact, he's the first to ever provide a solid framework for neural processing.
I'm sure those electrodes will work just the same on little timmy as well.
Turned off adBlock and only saw two adds on this page. The part that's sad is they are more interesting then the submission :/
I know it has yet to be tested, but it works.
Congradulations, you've won our dictionary definition word of the day!
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Why should I when he don't? His rantings are also peppered with factual inaccuracies, but someone ignorant would of course not know that.
Whatever.
Put at least SOME effort into making the submission not appear to be an advertisement (even if it is one).
This is why the human species is ultimately doomed. There is a basic disconnect at some basic level for too many people such that there is no respect for life. Sure, I understand the research and educational aspect, blah blah blah. Fine. Yes it's "only" a cockroach. Fine. Yes there are bigger atrocities everyday. Fine. I'm not saying we should never use a cockroach for research. But to see recreational "fun" in the discomfort of another creature (however small) shows that homo sapiens are mentally deficient. Yes, learning is necessary, research is required, but there should be no amusement aspect in it if we're wired correctly. Ultimately, and we already do, we shit on our own life support system. If we don't understand this, and it's apparent that by and large we don't as a species, we're ultimately doomed because we don't respect the systems that allow us to continue. If there's no respect, we will not do what is necessary to sustain those systems.
No I will not waste time debating this.
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
Shameless articles about torturing animals (even insects are beneath this) and astroturfing posts cheering them on. Wag of the finger, site I used to love...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Title: Backyard Brains Makes Educational (and Fun) Bioengineering Lab Kits
Description: Their motto is "Neuroscience for Everyone," and they mean it!
00:00) TITLE
A shot of Rob Rozeboom sitting at a small table appears with the SlasdotTV logo bar reading "Slashdot Editor Rob Rozeboom".
00:00) Rob
If you're a fan of Frankenstein but have worries about villagers chasing you with pitchforks and torches, the folks at Backyard Brains have science kits for you.
00:08) TITLE
The SlashdotTV title sequence appears with the title Backyard Brains and two small photos of electronics mounted to insects.
00:12) TITLE
A view of a guy at a group desk with various computer screens and tools appears.
00:12) Guy
To all those out there on the interwebs listening to me and thinking "When is this guy gonna show us the inventions already?",
00:17) TITLE
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view identifying this guy as "Backyard Brains Co-Founder Timothy Marzullo".
00:17) Timothy
The reason I can talk fast and hopefully talk about interesting things or boring things is because I have neurons.
Neurons are electrochemical devices - cells - and it's hard to monitor the chemical secretions - the neurotransmitters - because they happen in very small spaces, you need powerful microscopes and fluorescently tagged molecules, but the electricity that a neuron generates is easy to... well, easier to monitor due to this magical invention which is allowing all the listeners to watch me and it's called the transistor.
We all know due to the magic of the PN- and NP-junctions and creative uses of capacitors and resistors, we can make amplifiers and even computers.
00:58) Timothy
So what we have here are cockroaches and these are [...]
01:03) TITLE
The view zooms in on the box of cockroaches
01:03) Timothy
[...] muy especial cockroaches
- viven en el bosque de Sudamerica - they live in the rain forests of South America.
One of the reasons cockroaches are so fast is they have very large neurons in their legs. [...]
01:16) TITLE
The view zooms back out
01:16) Timothy
[...] These very large neurons are quite easy to record from.
Now, we want to treat the cockroaches in a humane fashion, so we need to anesthetize them and so, uhm.. did you bring your halothane with you, in addition to your camera?
01:31) Rob
No..
01:32) Timothy
The propathol?
01:33) Rob
No... I
01:34) Timothy
The pentobarbital?
01:35) Rob
I might have a fifth of Jack in the car, but..
01:38) Timothy
Yeah, yeah.. so we could actually use that for the earthworms, but for the cockroaches we're just gonna use.. this is relatively old technology that probably doesn't excite the people at Slashdot that much, but when water goes below a certain temperature it undergoes a phase change in terms from a liquid to a solid, and so what we have here is ice, in water, and so we're gonna put the cockroaches in the ice water [...]
02:03) TITLE
The view zooms in on the cup of ice water
02:03) Timothy
[...] and after a minute or two that will chill them out and anesthetize them.
02:06) Timothy
I'm actually allergic to cockroaches because I've been working on them for about two years.
I used to work in a rat lab, then I got allergic to rats, so I moved to cockroaches, now I'm allergic to cockroaches, so I'll have to move to.. maybe jellyfish and sea anemones next.
It's a constantly.. I'm constantly fighting this battle between creatures.
02:25) TITLE
Timothy grabs a cockroach and puts it into the ice water.
02:25) Timothy
So these are.. they live in the rotting trees of the Amazonian rain forest, and I'm jut gonna dunk 'm into the ice water.
And because these are cold-blooded, he can't mod.. regulate his own body core temperature and after a minute or two, he'll slowly.. he'll begin to move slower and slower and then we can do our exp
Forcing cockroaches -- even if it's just their legs -- to listen to Hip Hop "music" is cruel and inhumane.
If you want to know how neurons work, hit the library, or better, take a class at your local college. Torturing living things just because you can is cruel, mindless, and will not likely give you any serious insight.
I'm sure people will learn from these experiments. It won't be what you intend to teach.
No thanks. Our one foray into amateur neuroscience has been enough trouble. We've got an honest to goodness human brain sitting in a jar in our living room. I'm not sure why we agreed to take the thing. Took it from a relative who inherited it from her grandfather and dropped it off one day after we said "Hey, you've got a brain? That's cool!" Now we can't get rid of it. It's like some creepy fruitcake, but less festive.
Yeah, I'm posting anonymously. We don't want to attract zombies.
'nuff said
Wow, some people here see a cockroach in the context of an experiment and turn their brains off, it seems, when they wouldn't bat an eye about pest control.
Cockroaches don't even have the equipment to feel pain. Your anthropomorphization of all living things is just flat wrong.
I am the co-founder of Backyard Brains and the person in the video. I address two criticisms below:
1) Slashdot contacted me as we are a startup working out of the Ann Arbor Hackerspace, we develop educational hardware, and Slashdot, being based in Michigan, wants to highlight the local hacker and startup community. We are not paying Slashdot for this coverage.
2) Since we do many neuroscience experiments in schools and in the public sphere, and are occasionally covered in the media, we often cause debate on animal experimentation. For an extensive discussion on common criticisms, see:
http://wiki.backyardbrains.com/Ethical_Issues_Regarding_Using_Invertebrates_in_Education
An except is below:
"Our experiments are not philosophically perfect and without controversy; however, we believe the benefits outweigh the cost due to the inaccessibility of neuroscience in our current age. We have received several messages from adults and parents of children with neurological afflictions thanking us for making neuroscience easier to understand. We are constantly surveying the animal kingdom for easier and less invasive ways of unequivocally demonstrating neural activity. The cockroach leg preparation is the best we have found so far.
Some disagree, and that is important. Our methods raise many ethical questions including:
Are animal experiments for educational purposes valid?
What is the proper way to treat fellow creatures of the Earth?
In our classroom demonstrations we do discuss these ethical positions and take them seriously.
When we visit high school classrooms to do workshops, we give the students and their parents a form the day before. Here is a section:
"The equipment to be used, as well as the lessons to be followed, are experimental prototypes currently under refinement. The experiments that you will conduct are identical to or are variations on the procedures that you have seen demonstrated in class: invertebrates will be anesthetized and prepared for recording, nerve signals will be recorded, and various stimuli (tactile, thermal, light) will be applied to the preparation...
Please note that this is a research project designed for the purpose of improving education. You will benefit by gaining additional information about the nervous system and about the proper care of live animals (invertebrates) in research....
Risks are minimal:
Some sharp tools (pins and scissors) will be used (you will receive proper instruction in their use);
The invertebrates are not poisonous, do not sting or bite, and were purchased from commercial suppliers or raised in the laboratory expressly for this use;
You might experience mild emotional discomfort caused by exposure to the invertebrates (cockroaches or earthworms) or by the surgery (removal of a cockroach leg or exposure of the earthworm nervous system – both done while the animal is anesthetized and following scientifically accepted and humane procedures). If such discomfort occurs you will be free to stop participating at any time without penalty.
Your participation is entirely voluntary. If you decide not to participate there will be no negative effect on you or your relationship with your teacher..."
At least the fictional Frankenstein played with dead parts. You want to do something useful, figure out how to make the Bilderbergers twitch.
As if roaches were not already hard enough to kill.
we will soon have, Cybernetic Zombie Roaches.
Great just great.
You might want to re-read the definition of oxymoron. There is no oxymoron in the phrase "I know it has yet to be tested, but it works." Whether something works or not has no bearing on whether it has gone through testing or not. Testing does not make something work. I finds out if something already works or not.
Wow, two in a row!
So many winners, so little time to recognize them all.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Can they get cockroach parts to work like logic gates? I want to see the first cockroach-computer...
You can't say something works without testing it, you can only guess.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Oh please.
Not everything that remotely sounds "Nazi" is wrong.
Hitler was also fanatically anti-smoking, anti-animal cruelty, anti-Marxism, a vegetarian, and had a moustache.
Yet there are many anti-smoking, or anti-animal cruelty, or vegetarian, anti-Marxist, or moustache-bearing people who are perfectly fine.
Reductio ad Hitlerum is a logical fallacy.
A human analog is irrelevant. Humans are not analogous to cockroaches in this way. Humans feel pain through nociceptors. Cockroaches don't have these.
Besides that Humans can feel horror and misery that a brain as simple as a cockroaches almost certainly cannot. They do not have higher emotions and higher functions. They don't even have memory. Whatever it is like to be a cockroach, it is almost certainly nothing like what it is like to be a human.
Thanks for a needed dose of common-sense.
Crazy, misinformed environment activists (as opposed to reasonable, educated environment engineers) speak as if animal life was just as dignified as human life.
Newsflash: it isn't. Humans have far greater intelligence, are self-aware, and have free-will. While animals (specially mammals) should not be needlessly mistreated, they aren't to be treated as humans either.
If an economic project needs to put down an hectare of trees, it should be permitted unless it will harm humanity (through the destruction of environmental resources) or if the economic benefits are very small.
Animal cruelty......... OK OK OK its just a...... NM
while playing the piano into it.
A) Yes you can. It's easy. Just say it. You might be wrong. You might be right, but you can certainly say it.
B) Whether something works or not is not dependent on whether you have tested it or not.
The only thing that testing does is let you know if saying it works is correct or not. Of course, I presume the person that said "It hasn't been tested, but works" was using the word "tested" to mean a large scale study with controls and formal analysis. In that case, claiming that you can't say something works without testing it goes from being wrong to being absurd.
Actually cockroaches can learn
According to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070927132543.htm
cockroaches can learn.
I still agree that a human analogy is irrelevant, though.