NationStates Jolt Archive

"Brain" in Dish Flies Simulated Fighter Jet

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
November 19, 2004


Scientists have grown a living "brain" that sits inside a petri dish and can fly a simulated F-22 fighter aircraft.
The brainchild of Thomas DeMarse, a biomedical engineer at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the "brain in a dish" is a collection of 25,000 neurons taken from the brain of a rat that are connected to a computer via 60 electrodes.

The experiment is an opportunity to study how brain cells function as a network and to learn more about one of the most complex devices in the known universe: the human brain.

Full article here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1119_041119_brain_petri_dish.html

well, we're obsolete! The only thing we can do best for much longer is alcoholism! Cheers!

This is exceedingly cool. Also worth mentioning is that the EU is going ahead and building a fusion reactor.
Linkage (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/11/09/nuclear.eu.fusion.reut/index.html)

Also, a plague of locusts has just hit Israel. Anyone else laugh their ass off when they heard that? Not because I think they deserve it or anything (they don't), just because of the serious irony involved. Linkage As Well (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/11/22/israel.locusts.reut/index.html)

Those crazy science boffins have been repeatedly warned of the dangers of this kind of "tampering" with nature experiment by hollywood movies, Dean Koontz and other reputable sources.

Yet what do the do, go ahead and do it anyway. (And this on top of that guy in england who implants micro-chips into himself).

Clearly this is the begining of the end, I'm starting to believe the 2012 theories now.

That is awesome. I had no idea that we were so advanced in that sense. I...just...wow.

Let's see...I've got some Jack D.'s, some absinthe, some Black Forest Cherry Liqeur, and a nice stash of European beer. I'm set for the apocalypse.

Let's see...I've got some Jack D.'s, some absinthe, some Black Forest Cherry Liqeur, and a nice stash of European beer. I'm set for the apocalypse.

Oh yes, it's coming now.
:mad:

When the end comes I'll be so damn drunk I won't even notice!

Somebody posted a thread about this before . . .

Somebody posted a thread about this before . . .

Sorry about that! I didn't know it had already been covered.

MODS .... PLEASE LOCK THIS THREAD! :)

So, wait... what happens if, say, the petri plane decides that it doesn't want to be shot down over foreign soil and instead attacks the Pentagon? Aren't we just setting ourselves up to re-enact the Terminator movie?

What if the rat brain plane finds out about all the experiments we did on it's "brothers" and gets pissed. The possibilities for disaster are endless.

So, wait... what happens if, say, the petri plane decides that it doesn't want to be shot down over foreign soil and instead attacks the Pentagon?

I suppose you take a sledgehammer to it. It's only a bunch of neurons in a dish.

These scientists, they must have been too busy studying to read a sci-fi book. Oh well, as long as they find a way to make Asimov's 3 laws real. Otherwise there's gonna be some serious robot ass-kicking to be done :sniper:

For all you super-excited people - do realize that this is completely random. If you grow a neuronal network in a dish, you start getting a certain set of signals over and over again. Scientists can arbitrarly set one signal to be "turn right" and another to be "turn left". They then return signals that they arbitrarily designate to mean "you have turned right", "you have turned left", or "there's a tree!" However, the cells don't "know" what is going on. Such technology is far from being put into real practice or even from being understood.