Just in time for Halloween, University of Florida biomedical engineer Thomas DeMarse has designed a study in which a culture of roughly 25,000 rat neurons have coalesced to form a single biological “computer” of sorts. This culture is being studied (among other methods) via a multi-electrode array attached to a desktop computer running an F-22 flight simulator.

The clump has learned to pilot the plane.

From a UF News article:

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. ?You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out ? and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who?s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,? he said. ?(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it?s a live computation device.?

[From Gramling.]

DeMarse has a half-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to come up with a mathematical model to explain how the neurons “talk” to one another.

Reflect momentarily

What are the implications here? The simple and/or dangerous jobs might soon be going to literal neural nets of animals. What about humans? Let’s leave politics at the door for a minute and think about the foundational implications behind some hot topics. If we’re doing stem cell research on aborted children, what about going one step further and just utilizing the highly adaptive and developing neurons from these “unwanted” fetuses?

Now that I have your attention with something of sociological weight, what about the inevitable theological questions that will be involved if there is a mix of neural tissue–animal or otherwise–in our machines? [1] Ghost in the Shell won’t seem like such science fiction. The questions that have long kept postmodern thinkers burning the midnight oil will soon descend upon John Everyman in an unprecedented mass anxiety–expressed or repressed–about what defines the human, of what a psyche consists. We already have this, subtlely: we realize somehow that money doesn’t make the man; that Skinnerian determinism fails to predict vast components of human behavior; that Nietzchean humanity lacks hope; and that we don’t really know what to hope in as a society because if secular humanism coupled with moral relativism is the supreme paradigm by which we should conduct ourselves but man really is dead (and, thus, always has been, in the same way Nietzche so famously declared God to be dead) in an existential sense, then there is no ultimate purpose for living.

The bottom line is, there is a small cry in the vulnerable parts of the human soul no one wants to talk about or even acknowledge to themselves that wants to know that the hope they’re expected not to have but nevertheless retain isn’t ultimately in vain. I expect this cry to become less subtle as time moves on and technology threatens our long-held, comfortable understandings of ourselves.

[End Part 1]

References:

• Christensen, Bill. [2] Franken-Rodent: Rat Neurons in a Dish Play Flight Simulator. 26 October 2004.
• Gramling, Carolyn. [3] UF SCIENTIST: ?BRAIN? IN A DISH ACTS AS AUTOPILOT, LIVING COMPUTER. 21 October 2004.
• Sandhana, Lakshmi. [4] Wired News: Is That a Pilot in Your Pocket? 23 October 2004.

Just in time for Halloween, University of Florida biomedical engineer Thomas DeMarse has designed a study in which a culture of roughly 25,000 rat neurons have coalesced to form a single biological “computer” of sorts. This culture is being studied (among other methods) via a multi-electrode array attached to a desktop computer running an F-22 flight simulator.

The clump has learned to pilot the plane.

From a UF News article:

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. ?You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out ? and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who?s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,? he said. ?(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it?s a live computation device.?

[From Gramling.]

DeMarse has a half-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to come up with a mathematical model to explain how the neurons “talk” to one another.

Reflect momentarily

What are the implications here? The simple and/or dangerous jobs might soon be going to literal neural nets of animals. What about humans? Let’s leave politics at the door for a minute and think about the foundational implications behind some hot topics. If we’re doing stem cell research on aborted children, what about going one step further and just utilizing the highly adaptive and developing neurons from these “unwanted” fetuses?

Now that I have your attention with something of sociological weight, what about the inevitable theological questions that will be involved if there is a mix of neural tissue–animal or otherwise–in our machines? [5] Ghost in the Shell won’t seem like such science fiction. The questions that have long kept postmodern thinkers burning the midnight oil will soon descend upon John Everyman in an unprecedented mass anxiety–expressed or repressed–about what defines the human, of what a psyche consists. We already have this, subtlely: we realize somehow that money doesn’t make the man; that Skinnerian determinism fails to predict vast components of human behavior; that Nietzchean humanity lacks hope; and that we don’t really know what to hope in as a society because if secular humanism coupled with moral relativism is the supreme paradigm by which we should conduct ourselves but man really is dead (and, thus, always has been, in the same way Nietzche so famously declared God to be dead) in an existential sense, then there is no ultimate purpose for living.

The bottom line is, there is a small cry in the vulnerable parts of the human soul no one wants to talk about or even acknowledge to themselves that wants to know that the hope they’re expected not to have but nevertheless retain isn’t ultimately in vain. I expect this cry to become less subtle as time moves on and technology threatens our long-held, comfortable understandings of ourselves.

[End Part 1]

References:

• Christensen, Bill. [6] Franken-Rodent: Rat Neurons in a Dish Play Flight Simulator. 26 October 2004.
• Gramling, Carolyn. [7] UF SCIENTIST: ?BRAIN? IN A DISH ACTS AS AUTOPILOT, LIVING COMPUTER. 21 October 2004.
• Sandhana, Lakshmi. [8] Wired News: Is That a Pilot in Your Pocket? 23 October 2004.