
A living "brain" of cultured rat cells can control an F-22 flight simulator - ruedaminute
http://news.discovery.com/tech/brain-dish-flies-plane-041022.html
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jostmey
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
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
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 :-)

~~~
sillysaurus
_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
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.

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

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

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

------
Zikes
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>

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

~~~
dhughes
I imagined blowing up the bad guys = cheese.

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jjcm
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
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>

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famousactress
_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!?

~~~
mikeash
Controlling pitch and roll while at altitude is not actually very impressive,
no. If you were writing code to do this, you'd probably just slap a PID
controller on each axis, tune the coefficients, and be done. You _might_ break
100 lines of code if you like being verbose.

~~~
bigiain
People have quite significantly more sophisticated control that that running
on dinky little 8 bit micro controllers, see Ardupilot at
[https://store.diydrones.com/APM_2_5_Kit_p/br-
ardupilotmega-0...](https://store.diydrones.com/APM_2_5_Kit_p/br-
ardupilotmega-05.htm)

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

~~~
kanzure
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...](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/fbi-
diybio-2011/2011-07-13.txt)

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.

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

~~~
thenomad
It's OK, They Have A Plan.

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

~~~
mercuryrising
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...](http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/genetics/neurobiol.html)

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ftwinnovations
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
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.

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

~~~
sukuriant
sentience then

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

~~~
sukuriant
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.

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gersh
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
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.

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mwhooker
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.

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MaysonL
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...](http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Smith-C/Game-Rat-Dragon.html)

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

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

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

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

------
orbitingpluto
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!"

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jostmey
Old news. Simple PID controller.

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jared314
I wonder what the minimum number of neurons is to successfully fly the plane.

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

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vegasbrianc
Beginning to a Rat powered Skynet?

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ktizo
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...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/biomedical/bionics/rat-brain-robot-
grows-up)

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

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

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

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zeroexzeroone
the singularity is near...

