There was a Harry Potter theme party at Alex & Neriads last night that Ethan and I attended. There were some people there that I knew already, albiet not really. One man, Devon, had caught my atttention a long time ago by sketching me once. I had regretfully lost his e-mail address in the Grand Losing My Religion(contactbook) Disaster of early Aught-whatever. Now it seems we are all in contact again, thanks be to the internet.
I’ve been meaning to post this, though forgettting. It was brought up last night.
Rat Brain in a Dish Flies Plane Simulator
A University of Florida scientist has created a living “brain” of cultured rat cells that now controls an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator.
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For the recent project, Thomas DeMarse, a University of Florida professor of biomedical engineering, placed an electrode grid at the bottom of a glass dish and then covered the grid with rat neurons. The cells initially resembled individual grains of sand in liquid, but they soon extended microscopic lines toward each other, gradually forming a neural network — a brain — that DeMarse says is a “living computational device.”The brain then communicates with the flight simulator through a desktop computer.