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Here at the university of reading what we've created is a robot with the
biological brain. This is a brain where the neurons are cultured and grown under
laboratory conditions. So the only control of a physical robot is this
biological brain that we have grown. We take
neurons, a suspension of neurons and place it onto a multi electric array,
which is essentially a dish that has a surface of sixty electrodes that
pick up the electrical signals displayed by the neurons.
They then grow, divide, connect up, start to display various complex electrical
activities, which we can then introduce into the closed-loop system that
comprises these biological cells, these neurons on the multi electric
array connect it up to robotic system and then a sensory information from the
robotic system is fed back into the neurons, thereby giving us this
hybrid animas. Now this is really exciting, because we can put the
robot into different situations
and see how the memories that the robot have actually appear in the brain. We can
see the neurons firing and makeing connections between each other.
When we understand what's happening in the brian, this has tremendous potential
within the medical world particularly things like Alzheimer's disease. We can
actually see what's going on in a brain, a biological brain with memories how are
memories stored how are they recollected and what happens in the future. Can we
strengt them the memories so they don't disappear.Once the brain cells,
once the neurons on the MEA introduced to the closed loop-system
the electrical activity of the neurons is picked up
by the MEA.
Electrical activity goes to fairly complex processing steps
which ultimately drive the speed of movements, the speed of its
wheels, the direction in which he turns. Now the robot itself is equipped with
sensory apparatus, sonar sensors which we can say a equivalent to ouer ears and so forth
that sensory information which the robot is picking up all the time how far I am
away from a given wall or a wall behind me.
We can then turn into electrical stimulation that's delivered back to the
on the neurons on the MEA.
And so in that way information coming out and information being fed back in
and the interaction between the two goes around and around
for this close loop.
And by this means that we hope that the robot will actually learn
to perform meaningful functions.
We are really getting to the exciting stage of the project where we can try
and teach the robot how to behave.
But already what's amazing is with the robot going through particular
procedures. Coming to the wall avoiding an object and doing that repetitively
it's actually learning. In that way the neuron links a strengthening just from
the habit that robot has doing something repetitively and you can see this in
humans you do something frequently you get used to do it you become better at it.
That's what's exactly happening within the robot. We don't even have to
tell it. It's improving as it keeps doing something. One of the fundamental
questions neuron scientists are facing today's how we linked the
activity of individual neurons to the complex behaviors that we see in whole
organisms all animals.
And so this project gives us a very unique opportunity to look at something
that may exhibit whole behaviors, but still remain closely tied to the
activity of individual neurons. And hopefully we can use that to go
someday advance some of these very fundamental questions.
We have ageing society particularly in the western world.
And so problems such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, even strokes are
going to be much more prevalent, a much more of a problem for people. What we're
doing here with this research is trying to understand some of the basic
characteristics within a brain, so hopefully some of those diseases at
least we can find ways of remedying them, but maybe even discover a cure.