Flying Zombie Mice

[VendingMenace]

This is some pretty wacky (yet really cool) stuff that was done with mouse brain cells. The basic outline is as such...

 

1) Get some mouse brain cells (aka; neurons)

2) Grow them on a plate so that the neurons make connections with eachother

3) Teach cells to fly an airplane

 

 

Yeah, so maybe it was just a simplistic flight simulator, but still this is awsome. This has to be the coolest thing i have seen in a while (outside my discipline).

 

Anyways, some articles follow...

 

http:// http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2004news/braindish.htm

 

http:// http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65438,00.html

 

enjoy!

[Martin]

fascinating.

there was something about cultured rat neurons

controling a small mobile robot

April last year in Science Daily

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030428082503.htm

 

I think this is about work at a Georgia Tech lab by Steve Potter

and what you have is closely related work at a University of Florida lab by Thomas DeMarse

who was a student of Potter

They use similar methods. A "Petri dish" with 60 electrodes. Rat neurons.

 

Apparently they can keep the neurons alive for months and able to function.

It was interesting to read how the individual neurons send out "feelers" to their neighbors and gradually assemble themselves into a neural network.

Originally isolated cells spontaneously connecting themselves into a system.

 

Science Daily had the same essentially the same article

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041022104658.htm

It would be nice if there was something more detailed to read about this,

like a journal article by Potter or by DeMarse. If anyone knows of one, please post the link.

[ed84c]

I thought you couldnt grow nerve cells?

[Sayonara]

I thought you couldnt grow nerve cells?

You were wrong.

[Sorcerer]

I read something like this about a robot controlled with hangfish neurons in New Scientist about a year ago.

 

The first thing that spang to mind when I read the title was "vampire bats".

[Skye]

It's pretty amazing that the neurons can coordinate to form a functioning structure like that.

 

P.S. Who else here thinks they got it to fly a F-22 just so they could buy a flight sim using their grant money?

[Mokele]

"We're, um, evaluating the flight sim. Yeah. For the past 7 hours."

[ed84c]

You were wrong.

 

 

Have you got a link? Is it a new thing?

[Sayonara]

Have you got a link? Is it a new thing?

Five years old at least.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/309601.stm

[Spaceman]

i also thought you couldnt grow nerve cells,your link only refers to repairing existing cells not growin them,is there a more up to date link sayanora please

[Firedragon52]

Yes, I'm interested in knowing whether it actually is possible to grow new nerve cells. I'm in a college biology class right now, and my Professor distinctively said that nerve cells do not grow back. So if there really is a new scientific discovery, of regenerating neurons, my Prof. hasn't heard of it yet.

 

When I read the article, I assumed that the Scientist took the brain cells from mice stem cells and then cultured them. Is this far off?

[VendingMenace]

hmm...it seems in retropsect that my use of the word "grow" was a poor one.

 

I meant to use "grow" in the sense that the neurons are growing together to form connections with eachother.

 

To my knowledge (admitedly incomplete) brain cells cannot be cultured in the normal way in wich we think of that. That is, you cannot take some cells from someones brain, put them into media and have them multiply. Of course i could be wrong about this.

 

Whether or not it is possible for us to cause brain cells to multiply or not, this is not what was done in the article. What was done was mouse brain cells were placed on a plate in media and they were allowed to "grow" such that they re-established connections with eachother. Thus this group of cells formed a sort of minuature "brain."

 

But this was all in the links i posted.

From the article in my first link, paragraph 8

It’s essentially a dish with 60 electrodes arranged in a grid at the bottom' date='” DeMarse said. “Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network – a brain.”

[/quote']

[Scott]

hmm, would it then be possible to use the computer with a microphone and some speakers and 'talk' to the 'brain' and let it learn how to speak? That may be a little too complicated.

 

I also read an article on this disabled man who had an electrode implanted in his brain and then hooked it up onto a computer and then learned how to control the cursor with his brain. I thought that was pretty cool.

[Spaceman]

By the way unfortunately im a doubting thomas on this one.Ive read the articles on it but dont see any pictures,and whats more important common sense tells me even though the cells have reconnected to each other.they havent recreated all the functions of a complete brain with its different sensors,memory etc.It has no eyes so how the **** can it view the computer screen or make sense of the binary code.Even believing the fantastic how would this petrie dish brain know the point or purpose of controlling the plane left/right.it has no consciousness to think,no concept of space/time/sky/depth/height/wind/rain/colour/what a plane is/

seems to me like someones butt****ing us all.

 

 

come to think of it why bother with a few cells,hook the whole mouse up to electrodes(it must be more of an advantage-memory-eyes etc) sit it in from of the playstation and watch it kickass at Tekken....me thinks the outcome would be mouse trys to chew through wires,stares at screen twitching its whiskers wondering what the flips that.or are they suggesting take only a few mouse brain cells and hey presto mini Hawking.The only thing i can see they would share is they both cant walk off.

[slickinfinit]

Our brain emits waves that we can track alpha and beta waves now they are using these waves to develop flight sims using our brain that is cool and getting closer to full out bionics which I hope comes sooner rather than latter.lol make me a cyborg PLZ lol

[Spaceman]

hmm, would it then be possible to use the computer with a microphone and some speakers and 'talk' to the 'brain' and let it learn how to speak? That may be a little too complicated..

your kidding right...how many conversations you had recently with mice.Dr doolittle is only fiction you know

[Mokele]

has no eyes so how the **** can it view the computer screen or make sense of the binary code.

 

It doesn't need to. All it needs is things like fuel, flight-speed, pitch, roll, altitude, etc.

 

Human pilots "fly blind" all the time, though it's no something that they like to do.

 

Mokele

[Spaceman]

It doesn't need to. All it needs is things like fuel' date=' flight-speed, pitch, roll, altitude, etc.

 

Human pilots "fly blind" all the time, though it's no something that they like to do.

 

Mokele[/quote']

WTF i swear i cannot believe peoples gullibiltiy.Tell me how just a few of mouse brain cells on a petrie dish can comprehend pitch/roll/altitude,or its concept.My goodness please read post 14.

Its really amusing how a couple of students can make grown interlectual men fools.

[Sayonara]

It doesn't need to comprehend, it only needs to respond.

 

Insects can do this without brains, so it shouldn't be too difficult to grasp.

[Spaceman]

Saya you of all people here i respect the most,not for your maturity but your down to earth common sense.

In order to respond you must understand /comprehend/have a concept of just what your responding to.When you like all of us were a child learning to walk,the very first time you fell flat on your face like a cardboard cutout.You understood the fact that "hey if i dont put my hands out,i will smash my face in again and that hurts"

You fully understand the proccesses at work.

How could a petrie dish with a few brain cells,re-establish links to each other and correct the pitch/altitude of the plane sim,with no concept of why it should do this.You could run a thousand fold experiments wereby the plane always pitched to the left and crashed and burnt,without thought or understanding why would they correct it.

Its like placing a goldfish beside the pond,its one leap from freedom yet it doesnt comprehend the pond,even if it had came from that pond and only recently was in captivity.

Its only my opinion but if this experiment were true,then the cells must have consciousness,intellect,thought and memory.When ants leave the nest to get aphids to milk,they go get the aphid,they dont get outside and forget why they left.Insects dont have a brain granted,but they must have a neurological network that constitutes a brain

[Sayonara]

No. You do not need comprehension in order to have responses.

[Spaceman]

i know you dont mate,but were not talking here of involuntary responses like pulling your hand away from a hot cup.were talking mouse cells in jelly controlling the axis of a commodore 64 graphically challenged aeroplane and keeping it aloft.if the computer sends an electrical signal to the cells.Its going left...left....left man...LEFT..LEEEEEEFT !!!!!.why would the cells send a signal to move the plane in the opposite direction.Why would its response if thats what it does, not send the signal to go left, up,down etc and just be a random none defined series of pulses,because it was only responding to stimulus and electrical impulses to it.

Or are you just poking fun and winding me up !! lol in advance

 

EDIT

I tried a similar experiment with my hamster,whilst still alive i tied it down to a peice of cardboard with cellotape,cut away with a scalpel from my microscope kit a portion of its skull.Taking two pieces of copper fuse wire i gently inserted each in the temporal lobes of its brain.i made a crude jack at the other end and plugged this into the 2 player gamepad socket of my playstation.I loaded Fifa 2004and at half-time i was cruising 3-0,but low and behold the hamster soon picked the game up and kicked my butt 5-3

[Sayonara]

Do you know how neurons work?

[Spaceman]

I do yes polararized and depolarized,sodium ions,pottasium ions...how does this help our model?

[Sayonara]

You create a model by starting with first principles and working upwards, not by saying "well these cells in this petri dish show what I am going to call comprehension, therefore I am going to upgrade anything with a neural network - like insects - to the status of having comprehension of their surroundings. There, that explains it all."

 

If you know how neurons work and how they interact it is not difficult to work out how to make simple "circuits" with them, which respond to input with logical operations.