Joanie August 13th, 2008
Using real brain matter to build a computer… “Mainly for ethical reasons, it is unlikely that researchers at Reading or the handful of laboratories around the world exploring the same terrain will be using human neurons any time soon in the same kind of experiments.”
Well, definitely a line has been crossed with this experiment. Some might think it is just the line between between artificial versus non-artificial intelligence, but there are other subtler ones as well. What does this say about how we view pain, consciousness and life forms different from our own (ie non-human)? It’s “ethical” to use rats, but not humans? What do we really understand about the universal experience of pain? And how can anyone legitimately make these kinds of decisions until they know beyond a shadow of a doubt about the consequences of their actions in terms of creating suffering?
A ‘FRANKENROBOT’ WITH A BIOLOGICAL BRAIN
AFP
August 13, 2008
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1
Meet Gordon, probably the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by
living brain tissue.
Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter
was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the
neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.
Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between
natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental
building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told
AFP.
“The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a
biological brain,” said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of
Reading and one of the robot’s principle architects.
Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a network as they fire off
electrical impulses, he said, may also help scientists combat
neurodegenerative diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer’s and
Parkinson’s.
“If we can understand some of the basics of what is going on in our little
model brain, it could have enormous medical spinoffs,” he said.
Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation
“Wall-E”, Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.
Once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an
enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich
medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre (five-by-five inch) array of 60
electrodes.
This “multi-electrode array” (MEA) serves as the interface between living
tissue and machine, with the brain sending electrical impulses to drive the
wheels of the robots, and receiving impulses delivered by sensors reacting
to the environment.
Because the brain is living tissue, it must be housed in a special
temperature-controlled unit — it communicates with its “body” via a
Bluetooth radio link.
The robot has no additional control from a human or computer.
From the very start, the neurons get busy. “Within about 24 hours, they
start sending out feelers to each other and making connections,” said
Warwick.
“Within a week we get some spontaneous firings and brain-like activity”
similar to what happens in a normal rat — or human — brain, he added.
But without external stimulation, the brain will wither and die within a
couple of months.
“Now we are looking at how best to teach it to behave in certain ways,”
explained Warwick.
To some extent, Gordon learns by itself. When it hits a wall, for example,
it gets an electrical stimulation from the robot’s sensors. As it confronts
similar situations, it learns by habit.
To help this process along, the researchers also use different chemicals to
reinforce or inhibit the neural pathways that light up during particular
actions.
Gordon, in fact, has multiple personalities — several MEA “brains” that the
scientists can dock into the robot.
“It’s quite funny — you get differences between the brains,” said Warwick.
“This one is a bit boisterous and active, while we know another is not going
to do what we want it to.”
Mainly for ethical reasons, it is unlikely that researchers at Reading or
the handful of laboratories around the world exploring the same terrain will
be using human neurons any time soon in the same kind of experiments.
But rats brain cells are not a bad stand-in: much of the difference between
rodent and human intelligence, speculates Warwick, could be attributed to
quantity not quality.
Rats brains are composed of about one million neurons, the specialised cells
that relay information across the brain via chemicals called
neurotransmitters.
Humans have 100 billion.
“This is a simplified version of what goes on in the human brain where we
can look — and control — the basic features in the way that we want. In a
human brain, you can’t really do that,” he said.
For colleague Ben Whalley, one of the fundamental questions facing
scientists today is how to link the activity of individual neurons with the
overwhelmingly complex behaviour of whole organisms.
“The project gives us a unique opportunity to look at something which may
exhibit complex behaviours, but still remain closely tied to the activity of
individual neurons,” he said.
