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Amazing stuff!



Forgive me if this subject is not a usual Physics topic (yet), but I am
totally intrigued by the possibilities of this stuff!
The following was copied from MaximumPC.com:

Rats Control Robots Using Brain Power

A team of neurobiologists have discovered that rats can control machines
using only their brains.

The rats in question--six in all--had tiny electrodes, no thicker than a
hair, implanted into their brains, reported medical journal Nature
Neuroscience in its July issue.

"It doesn't hurt the animal,'' said John Chapin, of Hahnemann Medical
College in Philadelphia. ''All there is is a little plug coming out of the
animal's head. He runs around the cage and everything."

At first, the rats were taught to control a robotic arm in order to get a
drink of water. "We trained the rat initially to put his paw on a lever and
to press the lever down. When the lever got pressed down there was a robot
arm that moved over to a water dropper and then brought the water back to
the animal's mouth," Chapin said. When the lever was pressed down all the
way, the research team recorded the accompanying brain activity, which was
then converted into a single electronic signal that could move the robot
arm.

However, when the research team connected the lever to the converter
directly, they discovered that the brain activity controlling the movement
came before the actual movement did. Hence, the rats could get a drink just
by "thinking" about it, without actually having to touch the lever at all.

"When control of the robot arm was switched to the brain, the robot arm went
over and brought water to the animal's mouth before the animal even started
to move," Chapin said. "After a couple of days, the animals began to
recognize that and they stopped actually pressing the lever."

The neurobiologists think the technology may someday help paralyzed people.


Bob Sciamanda
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor