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A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

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Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#61

Post by jostmey »

sillysaurus wrote: post #59
jostmey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, DeMarse is a real scientist (or engineer?). I speculate that he did what he did to raise money for his research. I think DARPA money started pouring in to fund his lab after that paper. I just wish more money flowed through the NSF/NIH instead :-)

I think DARPA money started pouring in to fund his lab after that paper. I don't know how to feel about that. If you find some time, would you mind evaluating my write-up at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97299 ? I'm wrestling with the moral implications of a scientist riding a wave of unfounded hype to raise public money for his own lab. Also, I don't know if that's an accurate description of what happened; it…

One more thing: At least what DeMarse did was inspiring. The work that be built upon was rather boring.

Reference: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/28/9349.full.pdf+html

Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#63

Post by rflrob »

jostmey wrote: post #57
sillysaurus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing this. The attention he received for it was absolutely unwarranted. Anyone who reads the paper and understands what was written would also understand that. Unfortunately, not many people take the time to do that. I've not heard of anyone else attempt it -- it took me several hours of intensive thought to finally figure out what he'd done. At the end of it I felt so disgusted that it was being pre…

Yeah, DeMarse is a real scientist (or engineer?). I speculate that he did what he did to raise money for his research. I think DARPA money started pouring in to fund his lab after that paper. I just wish more money flowed through the NSF/NIH instead :-)

There's also the possibility that the grad student who'd been working on something a lot cooler (but never got it to work) wanted to graduate, and so pushed out what s/he had.

Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#64

Post by jostmey »

gersh wrote: post #62

How do you grow the rat brain? How hard is it to keep the rat brain alive? How hard would it be to mass produce rat brain CPUs?

You cut open the skull of the rat, pick out the ripest looking neurons, and place them on a block of cheese.

Okay, here is what actually happens. Neurons don't usually differentiate. So instead, cancerous neuronal cells are commonly used (neuroblastoma cells). Basically, these neuronal cells have decided to divide rapidly. You simply place these cells in a serum of growth medium consisting of protein, sugars, and salts and watch them divide over the course of a few days.

It would be nice to use stem cells instead or cancerous cells... but that is another thread entirely.

Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#66

Post by sukuriant »

thinkingisfun wrote: post #28
sukuriant wrote: post #11

And oh the fun that the ethics questions will become if this takes root and if the brains somehow show a level of consciousness in the future.

I saw this documentary yesterday (which had a VERY interesting sequence about those rat neurons flying planes, interviewing one of their "fathers" ^^). It is about the future, AI and transhumanism, called TechnoCalyps, which despite the title is actually rather good. It's on youtube, too.. so if you have 3 hours to spare.. it is sure to make you think about a whole range of subjects. IMHO these things cannot be consi…

Very awesome. I'll look into watching this later! Thanks for the headsup :D

Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#67

Post by gutnor »

famousactress wrote: post #4

Though the "brain" can successfully control a flight simulation program, more elaborate applications are a long way off, DeMarse said. Because flying a jet isn't all that impressive!?

Imagine the next generation of hacker t-shirt : "I can replace you with a small bathtub of rat brain cells"

Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#68

Post by andrewfelix »

ktizo wrote: post #51
wwweston wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably someone, somewhere has a bathtub of human neurons and is probably using them to try and predict the stock exchange. That's nothing. I've seen -- with my own eyes -- places where they have entire office floors or even buildings full of whole human bodies stationed trying to do the same thing.

Yes, but the bathtub doesn't demand coke at lapdancing clubs anywhere near as often.

I usually immediately down vote reddit style comments like this, but I just laughed coffee out my nostrils.

Re: A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

#70

Post by lloeki »

rbanffy wrote: post #33
tzs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fruit flies have about 100k neurons, according to Wikipedia.

Amazing. This puts the F-22 pilot between a fruit fly and a sea slug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_ne... But that's unfair. F-22's don't have to reproduce.

Every time I see a Wikipedia list such as this I can't help to marvel at the extent at which people contribute.

Yet as a developer I still have the uneerie feeling that all this data ought to be in a database and such a page content should be autogenerated with a single query.

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