Thread: Rat brain taught to fly jet fighter

DEC 06, 2004 CALGARY HERALD PAGE: A9

Rat brain taught to fly jet fighter

Philip Sherwell
The Telegraph
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction: a brain nurtured in a Petri dish learns to pilot a fighter plane as scientists develop a new breed of "living" computer. In ground-breaking experiments in a Florida laboratory, however, that is exactly what is happening.

The "brain," grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists at the University of Florida.

They hope that the remarkable research into neural computation will help them develop sophisticated hybrid computers, with a thinking biological component.

One target is to install living computers in unmanned aircraft so they can be deployed on missions that are too dangerous for humans because of the risk of attack or hazardous terrain.

They could also be used in remote bomb-clearance machines. Separately, it is hoped that the research will provide the basis for developing new drugs to treat brain diseases such as epilepsy, by investigating what happens when cells stop working together normally.

The brain-in-a-dish is the idea of Thomas DeMarse, a 37-year-old assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. His pioneering work has been praised as a significant insight into one of the universe's most complex devices -- the brain -- by leading American academics and scientific journals.

The 25,000 neurons were immersed in a specialized liquid suspension to keep them alive and then laid across a grid of 60 electrodes in a small glass dish.

Soon the cells begin to connect to form what scientists are calling a "live computation device" (in effect, a brain). The electrodes measure and stimulate neural activity in the network, allowing researchers to study how the brain processes, transforms and stores information.

In the most striking experiment, the brain was linked up to the jet simulator. Manipulated via the electrodes and a desktop computer, it was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds.

"When we first hooked them up, the plane crashed all the time," said DeMarse. "But over time, the neural network slowly adapts as the brain learns to control the pitch and roll of the aircraft. After a while, it produces a nice straight and level trajectory."