Rats can fly F22

August 5, 2006 at 6:10 pm (Science)

A Florida scientist has developed a “brain” in a glass dish that is capable of flying a virtual fighter plane and could enhance medical understanding of neural disorders such as epilepsy.

super ratThe “living computer” was grown from 25,000 neurons extracted from a rat’s brain and arranged over a grid of 60 electrodes in a Petri dish. When linked up to an F-22 jet flight simulator, the brain and the simulator established a two-way connection similar to how neurons receive and interpret signals from each other to control our bodies.

Gradually the brain learnt to control the flight of the plane based on the information it received about flight conditions.

Read the full details @ CNN.com

1 Comment

  1. Kitty said,

    Have you heard about the super rats invading london?

    Here’s a column from the Guardian:

    Twenty-two inches from quivering whisker to fat tail, they can chomp through concrete and leap more than two feet in the air. Sauntering down your street in broad daylight, insolently raising two claws to the binman, they rifle through your rubbish and scoff poison as if it was milk chocolate. There is something of the night and also something of the urban myth about the nearly indestructible super rat coming to a pile of carelessly discarded foodstuffs near you. But Britain’s pest controllers are adamant: they are receiving more panicky reports of rodent infestation than ever, and it does seem that our rats are evolving into something not seen before.

    Anyway it seems I’e being doing the same sort of thing as you and chomping through others people’s inane, interesting, intriguing and ill-conceived sites.

    Bless you, poppet.

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