
Experimental analog synth controlled by stem cell neural network - glitcher
http://cdm.link/2017/05/cybernetic-synth-contains-brain-grown-inventors-cells/
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Ok wow, this is interesting. This Guy is quite an ambitious musician.
Unfortunately I don't think the "performance" of these cultured neurons will
ever live up to his expectations, but I give him props for trying something
novel. To summarize...

Guy Ben-Ary took a sample of his skin cells, and with the help of a couple
different biology labs induced skin cells into pluripotent stem cells, then
differentiated those cells into neurons. The neurons were plated on a multi-
electrode array dish, so electrical signals could be sent to the neurons, and
received by an ephys amplifier / recording device.

At first I thought he was attempting to train these neural networks to
synthesize music, but it actually doesn't seem like that's being attempted. It
looks like he's just sort of crudely prodding the neurons to fire (banging on
a drum kit mic'd up with outputs to the multi-electrode array dish); at the
same time he's amplifying the neural activity, and passing it through some
filters in at attempt to make it sound as musical as 10,000 stochastically
crackling neurons can be. Here's an example of what that sounds like:
[https://youtu.be/CWb_7mYLa6g](https://youtu.be/CWb_7mYLa6g)

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continued...

As a neurobiologist/electrophysiologist I suspected this random crackling is
what it would sound like, since that's what activity from my cultured neurons
sounds like. Any good neuro/psych student should remember this Nobel prize
winning Hubel & Weisel experiment:
[https://youtu.be/8VdFf3egwfg](https://youtu.be/8VdFf3egwfg)

I think this approach to synthesizing music from neural activity is completely
misguided. But there are a few tweaks that might salvage the project...

1\. First, they need to focus on the output of far fewer neurons. I know ya'll
are experts in machine learning-type neural nets - the current "CellF" setup
would be like sending the weights of an untrained 10k-node neural net to your
laptop speakers, and just looping over those weights MCMC style. I think they
would be better served to isolate the output a few neurons and translate those
activation patterns into prefabricated musical samples. For example if the
neuron fires at 60 Hz, the sample on MIDI channel 1 is activated (or something
like that).

continuing...

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svantana
> I think this approach to synthesizing music from neural activity is
> completely misguided.

Perhaps I am overly cynical, but I suspect the artist himself knew it would
produce noise basically, but it doesn't matter because this is the type of
thing that gets attention and that's the real currency in art. Similarly,
there was an analog synth module that came out a while back that was driven by
radioactive decay [1]. Both of these could easily be simulated by a few lines
of code and nobody could tell the difference.

[http://www.factmag.com/2017/01/16/geiger-counter-synth-
modul...](http://www.factmag.com/2017/01/16/geiger-counter-synth-module-
video/)

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Yeah I agree. I think he achieved his goal, for sure. Somewhere between the
induction of pluripotent cells and plating these stem cells on an MEA dish for
neuron differentiation I forgot this guy was preparing an art performance
piece.

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I think the ethical aspect of this is interesting.

Are you allowed to experiment on your own cells? How will this interact with
various laws regarding human experimentation.

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hobarrera
I was thinking the same thing. I kinda dislike that the called it "HIS
external brain". They gathered cells and created a new organism using it a a
base. It's not "him" any more.

If it had been an embryo, and they let it grow 10 years (eg: into a child),
would they still call it part of him?

My example scenario is quite absurd, I know, I'm merely attempting to show
that where we draw the line [if at all] is extremely fuzzy.

More on point; can this organism feel pain? The amount of neurons seems to be
in the same order of magnitude as flies.

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You guys might be interested in a court case known as Moore v. Regents of the
University of California,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Regents_of_the_Univer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Regents_of_the_University_of_California)

> A was a landmark Supreme Court of California decision filed on July 9, 1990,
> which dealt with the issue of property rights to one's own cells taken in
> samples by doctors or researchers. In 1976, John Moore was treated for hairy
> cell leukemia by physician David Golde, a cancer researcher at the UCLA
> Medical Center. Moore's cancer cells were later developed into a cell line
> that was commercialized by Golde and UCLA. The California Supreme Court
> ruled that a hospital patient's discarded blood and tissue samples are not
> his personal property and that individuals do not have rights to a share in
> the profits earned from commercial products or research derived from their
> cells.

To my knowledge there is no case law for "non-discarded" cells.

