A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator

jostmey 13 years ago |

I actually meet DeMarse in Florida. I made it a point to try and speak with him about his "brain in a dish". He was clearly aggravated with me. He told me about all the other amazing things his lab was doing, and how "dumb" his "brain in a dish" actually was. It was obvious to me that he felt the attention his "brain in a dish" had received was unwarranted.

sillysaurus 13 years ago | |

Thank you for sharing this. The attention he received for it was absolutely unwarranted. Anyone who reads the paper and understands what was written would also understand that. Unfortunately, not many people take the time to do that. I've not heard of anyone else attempt it -- it took me several hours of intensive thought to finally figure out what he'd done. At the end of it I felt so disgusted that it was being presented as "rat brain flies plane" that over the years I've often been tempted to do a write-up chastising the author for advancing his scientific career by tricking people rather than discover something new or build something innovative.

This story has been reposted to HN a few times over the years. My reaction to this particular repost was to feel intensely guilty that so many people were still being tricked by the same old snakeoil. Then I looked up what the author had done in the subsequent years, and it's a pleasant surprise: DeMarse has worked on some wonderfully interesting projects which are quite unique.

I'm glad that I never tried to expose this "brain in a dish" as the lie that it is. Everyone deserves to make a mistake once in awhile, and his, I think, was merely to be flattered that reporters were interested in his work at all, which is quite a natural reaction. I'm sure he regrets that he wasn't as careful as he should've been with correcting the reporters' assumptions.

jostmey 13 years ago | | |

Yeah, DeMarse is a real scientist (or engineer?). I speculate that he did what he did to raise money for his research. I think DARPA money started pouring in to fund his lab after that paper. I just wish more money flowed through the NSF/NIH instead :-)

rflrob 13 years ago | | |

There's also the possibility that the grad student who'd been working on something a lot cooler (but never got it to work) wanted to graduate, and so pushed out what s/he had.

sillysaurus 13 years ago | | |

I think DARPA money started pouring in to fund his lab after that paper.

I don't know how to feel about that. If you find some time, would you mind evaluating my write-up at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=97299 ?

I'm wrestling with the moral implications of a scientist riding a wave of unfounded hype to raise public money for his own lab. Also, I don't know if that's an accurate description of what happened; it seems that way to me, but I'm worried I'm wrong. I'd be grateful to get your thoughts (and anyone else's).

jostmey 13 years ago | | |

I don't know how to reply to the old post you put up. So I will reply here. I think DeMarse accomplished something a bit more complicated than what is described in the comments of the old Hacker news post. The protocol used by DeMarse actually modified the strength of the synaptic connections between the neurons in the petri dish. It seems (though not proven) that LTP/LTD is occurring.

Here is the pertinent reference in DeMarse's paper: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/28/9349.full.pdf+html

Now to answer what you asked me about. Do I think what DeMarse did is morally right or wrong? I do not want to pass judgement because I am still in school and don't have to worry about funding my own research. A professor I respect for his scientific integrity told me every scientist has a skeleton in their closet (referring to research projects). I think the fact that DeMarse's paper caught on like wildfire just goes to show you that a majority of Humans (computer programmers included) can be relatively stupid.

jostmey 13 years ago | | |

One more thing: At least what DeMarse did was inspiring. The work that be built upon was rather boring.

Reference: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/28/9349.full.pdf+html

peeters 13 years ago |

Whenever I hear stuff like this, I feel an existential crisis looming.

I'm about 99% sure that I'm not just a brain in a dish plugged into a simulator.

jakeonthemove 13 years ago | |

Of course not! You're just a brain plugged into a highly advanced organic mobile platform - you should feel good about it :-).

cglee 13 years ago | | |

The "highly advanced" part remains yet to be seen.

omarchowdhury 13 years ago | | |

yeah, because YOU, are controlling every interaction of the trillion-trillion cells in your body

Deestan 13 years ago | | |

It has far more mobility and longevity that any machine we're able to produce at the moment.

Zikes 13 years ago |

When this story broke it inspired a similar story about a dog brain in a dish playing Quake 3, which was later revealed to be a hoax: http://home.actlab.utexas.edu/~dbailey/project1.html

quux 13 years ago |

How did the brain know what situations were good or bad? Were there reward and pain electrodes or something?

dhughes 13 years ago | |

I imagined blowing up the bad guys = cheese.

jjcm 13 years ago |

Here's the paper: http://neural.bme.ufl.edu/page13/assets/NeuroFlght2.pdf

It looks like they're using a combination of high and low frequency pulses as a reward/punishment mechanism, though I don't fully understand how that influences the decisions being made. Would love if someone could explain it in more detail.

jostmey 13 years ago | |

It is called Long Term Potentiation and is believed to be one of the ways information is stored in the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation

famousactress 13 years ago |

Though the "brain" can successfully control a flight simulation program, more elaborate applications are a long way off, DeMarse said.

Because flying a jet isn't all that impressive!?

ruedaminute 13 years ago |

I just realized this was from 2004. Ah well, fascinating anyway. Wonder whatever happened with all that.

kanzure 13 years ago | |

Well, there was a biohacking group in Los Angeles doing neural tissue cultures to replicate similar work.

http://biohackers.la/

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/fbi-diybio-2011/2011-07-13...

Regarding the other comment that was asking about how flying a jet might be insufficiently advanced: basically it's just wired up to Microsoft Flight Simulator, and the neural outputs are hooked up to the essential inputs and controls of the simulator. Hooking up an actual tissue culture with an electrode array tends to be more difficult (or at least more work) than wiring up keyboard bindings to a weight-summer network thing.

sprobertson 13 years ago | |

Well, you've heard about those "unmanned" drones...

aaronbrethorst 13 years ago |

Oh great, they invented a Cylon Raider. This'll end well.

thenomad 13 years ago | |

It's OK, They Have A Plan.

duaneb 13 years ago |

I wonder what the functional difference is between rat brain cells and human brain cells.

mercuryrising 13 years ago | |

The cells are essentially identical.

This is a fundamental question when doing rat studies, you would like the regions of the brain your are affecting in the rat to be similar to the regions you would find in a human brain.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/genetics/ne...

ftwinnovations 13 years ago |

Odd, this is from 2004, so it's 8 years old, which is like a century in tech years. I'm surprised I have not heard of more advancements in this (creepy!) field.

jostmey 13 years ago | |

That because basic science research is a painstaking slow process. It is very rare to see a field of research just explode at an exponential pace like software development has.

sukuriant 13 years ago |

And oh the fun that the ethics questions will become if this takes root and if the brains somehow show a level of consciousness in the future.

sp332 13 years ago | |

It's already aware of its surroundings, and can respond to its environment.

sukuriant 13 years ago | | |

sentience then

icebraining 13 years ago | | |

An instance of Nginx can also respond to its environment, but I wouldn't call it sentient.

sukuriant 13 years ago | | |

precisely. So, then replace 'consciousness' with 'sentience' in my original proposition. I am not saying response to an environment is sentience; but, when using living brain tissue, there may be a chance that these computers will eventually display sentience.

thinkingisfun 13 years ago | |

I saw this documentary yesterday (which had a VERY interesting sequence about those rat neurons flying planes, interviewing one of their "fathers" ^^). It is about the future, AI and transhumanism, called TechnoCalyps, which despite the title is actually rather good. It's on youtube, too.. so if you have 3 hours to spare.. it is sure to make you think about a whole range of subjects.

IMHO these things cannot be considered in isolation. We as society should really start talking about our progress and where we want to go, instead of a few people being into it, the rest feeling threatened. We can do better, and we surely have to the tools for it.

sukuriant 13 years ago | | |

Very awesome. I'll look into watching this later! Thanks for the headsup :D

gersh 13 years ago |

How do you grow the rat brain? How hard is it to keep the rat brain alive? How hard would it be to mass produce rat brain CPUs?

jostmey 13 years ago | |

You cut open the skull of the rat, pick out the ripest looking neurons, and place them on a block of cheese.

Okay, here is what actually happens. Neurons don't usually differentiate. So instead, cancerous neuronal cells are commonly used (neuroblastoma cells). Basically, these neuronal cells have decided to divide rapidly. You simply place these cells in a serum of growth medium consisting of protein, sugars, and salts and watch them divide over the course of a few days.

It would be nice to use stem cells instead or cancerous cells... but that is another thread entirely.

mwhooker 13 years ago |

I found this paper on the "semi-living artist" mentioned in the article fascinating. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2533587/

Answered a lot of my questions about how the brain was cultured and stimulated.

MaysonL 13 years ago |

Rat brains? Paul Linebarger is rolling in his grave.

[See "The Game of Rat and Dragon" if you don't get it.] http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Smith-C/Game-Rat-Dragon.ht...

purui 13 years ago |

25k cells. Even if the brain is fully connected bidirectionally, it has at most 625M connections. Can it be simulated by software?

jostmey 13 years ago | |

Yeah, with about ten lines of code. The neurons are acting as a simple PID controller.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller

ChuckMcM 13 years ago |

Kind of creepy, reminds me of the Stanislaw Lem story about the mouse brain over ride in the long duration starship.

orbitingpluto 13 years ago |

Pinky: "Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"

The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!"

jostmey 13 years ago |

Old news. Simple PID controller.

jared314 13 years ago |

I wonder what the minimum number of neurons is to successfully fly the plane.

rjzzleep 13 years ago |

good idea, lets have animal brains into our skynet robots. they totally don't hate us for exterminating a species a week.

vegasbrianc 13 years ago |

Beginning to a Rat powered Skynet?

ktizo 13 years ago |

Kevin Warwick has a more up to date version of this controlling a robot in his lab at Reading Uni - http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/biomedical/bionics/rat-br...

Presumably someone, somewhere has a bathtub of human neurons and is probably using them to try and predict the stock exchange.

wwweston 13 years ago | |

> Presumably someone, somewhere has a bathtub of human neurons and is probably using them to try and predict the stock exchange.

That's nothing. I've seen -- with my own eyes -- places where they have entire office floors or even buildings full of whole human bodies stationed trying to do the same thing.

ktizo 13 years ago | | |

Yes, but the bathtub doesn't demand coke at lapdancing clubs anywhere near as often.

andrewfelix 13 years ago | | |

I usually immediately down vote reddit style comments like this, but I just laughed coffee out my nostrils.

ruedaminute 13 years ago | |

Ah, good point! I bet this lady has one of those tubs of myelin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2025069/Joan-Ginth...

StavrosK 13 years ago | | |

It's the daily mail. The correlation of its stories with reality is exactly 0.

ruedaminute 13 years ago | | |

Nah dude, this one did happen. Google 'Joan Ginther', it's been written about everywhere.

ktizo 13 years ago | | |

Perhaps they were trying to prove she cures cancer, and accidentally wrote something vaguely accurate instead.

StavrosK 13 years ago | | |

I know it's bad form to comment rather than just upvote, but I wanted you to know I'm still laughing with that remark.

lsh 13 years ago | |

... or is bathing in them. ew.

zeroexzeroone 13 years ago |

the singularity is near...