The Brain that Wouldn't Die!

Ok...I have the resources to do this kind of thing (given my job):

http://www.hoise.com/vmw/04/articles/vmw/LV-VM-11-04-29.html

'University of Florida scientist has grown a living "brain" that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network. The "brain", a collection of 25.000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat's brain and cultured inside a glass dish, gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level.'

if not the time. So here's the deal: how would people feel interacting with avatars run from a culture of cells in a petri dish? Input would be jiggered so that only movement could be controlled by the "brain."

I think after having sex with its avatar and then asking it for its 1st life picture. I'd be very disappointed.

I would be overjoyed at this turn of events.

"Hell.. at least its not a guy..."

Well, you could say you were interested in her mind and mean it.....

and I bet the damn thing would have the cheek to call me shallow after I'd backed out of the relationship.

The comeback, however, is obvious.

"I'm shallow? And you're calling a petri dish DEEP?"

On the plus side, the 21st-25th of the month would go comparitively smoothly.....

Creepy as all hell, but nontheless absolutely fascinating!!!


ps where do you work that you have access to petri dishes of rat brain cells to wire up?


ehhh you never said you'd have rat brain cells, so nono, nevermind, don't answer that.

you know, if he got it to work, technically it would be a huge advance toward human immortality via machines.

Anything I can contribute to the nobel prize?

round here all you would need is a peice of cheese and a elephant gun, two or 3 shots later the rat's dead, scoop the brains and fry up the rest!

MMM theres good eatins

http://www.angelfire.com/goth/1x1nyc/images/p4170010.jpg

Frog brain cells. I work at Drexel University in the field of neural prosthesis (direct neural-computer interface) specifically for use in spinal cord injury treatment.

really this does intrest me, i personally cant wait untill i can get a nuro grid installed in my skull (mainly so i wont have to hit ctrl alt enter f3 tab * p to turn on property lines)

When I was a grad student, a friend of mine developed a way to reconstruct images from electrical signals in a horshoe crab optic nerve, plotting the electrical signal against various time delayed versions of the signal, subdividing the "space" of the plot into a neural network input, and training the net to associate pattern features the net could recognize as portions of images.

I've often toyed with the idea of doing something similar with simple external EEG electrodes placed at standard locations on the head. No need for any surgery...

I know that one company (I think it's whatever Telefactor or Bio-Logic calls itself these days) has developed this very kind of system. And these companies operate at much closer to "garage science" level than they'd like you believe.

Just make sure that if you end up with SHODAN, you ship her happy butt to EQ2 or WoW instead of jacking her into SL .

WOuld i be correct in the layman's assumption that the concept involves assaulting the sensory portions of the brain with input from a modified graphics adapter concept, convincing it that the SL world is reality?

To a lesser and more complicated degree, of course. And I'm convinced that any creature, sentient or no, would go apeshit and lose its mind when it hit lag.

Then post complaints on the forums for the rest of the day.

Garage Sincece rocks! The idea of a multi coperate lab is a fairly recent one, things that turned the world on end were usually done in garages, workshops, cottages ect..

Cotton Gin
Steam Engine
Electric lamps
Radation
Radio
Personal Computers

to name a few, from the first person to smelt copper to the wizard of woz (the apple guy) the world has been mainly forged from some yahoo, with way too much time on their hands and a genuine intrest in the subject, without punching International Corperation LLC.'s timecard

Look at you, Hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Now selling the audio .

Thinking of opening a nightclub called "Citadel Station" just to use the clips.

Does this picture link work?

Angelfire hates you.

it should, i just grabed it off of goofle

its not even that whitty or cute

actually....the EEG idea is an output only device...mentally directing the mouse, etc....
it's doable with some of the stuff I have at work, but I'm not sure my PI would appreciate that usage...then again, it might make a good paper.

as for the organisms interfaced to a virtual reality (Their "inventor" Thomas DeMarse calls them "Animats", I'm actually trying to think of ways to model it at first using an artificial neural network at home, XML/RPC stuff, a network output-to-keystroke conversion....

If I do that, though, it'll be a real research project, one I plan to publish.

I dunno but The Brain that wouldn't Die was a pretty cool MST3K movie.

Would your frankenfrog brain be somehow aware of it's SL enviorment?

It would be cultured frog cells (not a full brain)...really tadpole...since you can't culture adult frog neurons...or at least I haven't been able to.

But telemetry is the trick. The avatar could wear an attachment that relays telemetry about the avs position, velocity, acc...etc to my web server, which would then exchange info with my desktop...

Clearly, there is no *visual* interface for this kind of project, as I don't have the foggiest idea how to map info from OPENGL into something a self-organized plate of tissue could recognize. But postional information, that's easy. First you just group various spatial neural firing patterns into clusters based on the location of the bulk of activity in the dish. patterns closest to one of the 4 cardinal directions indicate movement in a particular direction. Patterns are reinforced (if the "correct" movement is attained) by running a small current immediately after pattern is activated (thus strengthening the synapses that were recently involved in the mass depolarization)


This is exactly what DeMarse did with his flight simulator (and he did it first in a simple, 2D environment).

Collisions could be inferred by a rapid change in direction not accounted for by firing pattern. Of course, this could just as easily be attribted to grief.