Wired Mice...err Rats
Not what you're thinking, though it does have a lot to do with computers. Scientists at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center have wired the brains of rats hooking them into a computer. By stimulating rats brains electronically they effectively turned them into remote control rodents. Eventually these remote control rats could be used for various tasks such as search and rescue and land mine detection. Further more it represents some interesting advances in remote prothestics research. Basically the technology works like this: "For cues, the researchers sent electric signals to brain regions that process impulses from whiskers. For rewards, the researchers stimulated a pleasure center known as the medial forebrain bundle." Read more
here.
current science news posted by Greg at 5/06/2002 08:54:00 PM
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