Member Since: 11/4/2010
Posts: 34,287
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Scientists 'can control animals like a video game'
Quote:
Science fiction has become reality as scientists used a laser to control an animal's brain - 'steering' the creature like a car by sending instructions saying, 'Left' and 'Right'.
The laser could also be used to implant false memories in the animals' brains, fooling them into thinking that food was nearby.
"By manipulating the neural system of this animal, we can make it turn left, we can make it turn right, we can make it go in a loop, we can make it think there is food nearby," said Sharad Ramanthan, an Assistant Professor of Biology at Harvard.
"We want to understand the brain of this animal, which has only a few hundred neurons, completely and essentially turn it into a video game, where we can control all of its behaviors."
The research was published in the journal Nature.
Ramanthan and his team were able to take control of Caenorhabditis elegans – tiny, transparent worms – by manipulating neurons in the worms' "brain."
The work, Ramanathan said, is important because, by taking control of complex behaviors in a relatively simple animal - C. elegans have just 302 neurons –we can understand how its nervous system functions..
"If we can understand simple nervous systems to the point of completely controlling them, then it may be a possibility that we can gain a comprehensive understanding of more complex systems," Ramanathan said.
"This gives us a framework to think about neural circuits, how to manipulate them, which circuit to manipulate and what activity patterns to produce in them ".
Using genetic tools, researchers engineered worms whose neurons gave off fluorescent light, allowing them to be tracked during experiments.
Researchers also altered genes in the worms which made neurons sensitive to light, meaning they could be activated with pulses of laser light.
The largest challenges, though, came in developing the hardware necessary to track the worms and target the correct neuron in a fraction of a second.
"The goal is to activate only one neuron," he explained.
"That's challenging because the animal is moving, and the neurons are densely packed near its head, so the challenge is to acquire an image of the animal, process that image, identify the neuron, track the animal, position your laser and shoot the particularly neuron – and do it all in 20 milliseconds, or about 50 times a second.
"The engineering challenges involved seemed insurmountable when we started. But we overcame these challenges."
"The system researchers eventually developed uses a movable table to keep the crawling worm centered beneath a camera and laser. They also custom-built computer hardware and software, Ramanathan said, to ensure the system works at the split-second speeds they need.
The end result, he said, was a system capable of not only controlling the worms' behavior, but their senses as well.
In one test described in the paper, researchers were able to use the system to trick a worm's brain into believing food was nearby, causing it to make a beeline toward the imaginary meal.
Going forward, Ramanathan and his team plan to explore what other behaviors the system can control in C. elegans.
Other efforts include designing new cameras and computer hardware with the goal of speeding up the system from 20 milliseconds to one.
The increased speed would allow them to test the system in more complex animals, like zebrafish. (source)
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so right now they're just doing this to worms but the premise of it all is still really immoral imo. it's not only cruel to toy with animals in this way, but the fact they're literally likening it to a video game is kinda barbaric 
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Not our Illuminati faves being able to control stans soon and start actual pop wars. 
I am ready.
