“Gordon” is a biobiot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue. Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter is removed from rat fetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, and then specialized nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across a five-by-five inch array of 60 electrodes. This “multi-electrode array” (MEA) serves as the interface between living tissue and machine. In the photo below, the person is holding the brain card containing the neruones that can then be ‘docked’ onto the robotic unit.
This groundbreaking experiment explores the ever-vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could provide revolutionary insight on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning.
Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading (one of the project’s principal researchers) says that the purpose of this robot is to figure out how memories are stored in biological brain tissue.
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.
The most scary and fascinating thing about the experiments going on here is that from the very start of the work, the neurons are already active. Professor Warwick says that within a 24-hours period, the neurons already establish connections with the others by sending out feelers. Then, after about a week, there is evidence of spontaneous firings and brain-like activity, not unlike that in the human brain. And, without any stimulation at all from the research team, the ‘brain’ withers and dies within a couple of months
Link to the ABC Science site.
Filed under: robot r&d
