Can a rat’s brain control a robot? This would be soul so weird to anyone but is apparently true to the University of Reading in Paris. The robot, called Gordon is the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue. Groundbreaking experiments of this kind actually explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning. So what is the use of these experiments? This research has opened up a lot of possibilities in medical and robotic fields. One of them is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain. The study may also help scientists combat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s which attack the brain by observing the nerve cells when they fire off electrical impulses.
Posted on January 16th 2010 in Health
