Franken-Rodent: Rat Neurons in a Dish Play Flight Simulator

By Bill Christensen
published

The "brain" is a small puddle of 25,000 living neurons taken from a rat's brain and cultured in a glass dish.

At first, the simulated plane drifts randomly. But the neural network slowly learns; currently, the brain can control the pitch and roll of the simulated craft in most weather conditions, including storms and hurricane-force winds.

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Until now, apparently... (Read more from Starfish smart gels)

(This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.)

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Bill Christensen
Technovelgy Editor

Bill Christensen is the founder and editor of Technovelgy (opens in new tab), a website dedicated to cataloguing  the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers. Bill is a dedicated reader of science fiction with a passion about science and the history of ideas. For 10 years, he worked as writer creating technical documentation for large companies such as Ford, Unisys and Northern Telecom and currently works to found and maintain large websites. You can see Bill's latest project on Twitter (opens in new tab).