from the news section of Compuserve(I gag myself everytime I see that=20 word....) Welcome to the collective, people :) while this is very little to do with wearables or pervasive computing its= =20 application in both fields are quite possible __________________________________ =AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF= =AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF=AF Scientists Pilot Rats With Electrodes By RICK CALLAHAN=20 By implanting electrodes in rats' brains, scientists have created=20 remote-controlled rodents they can command to turn left or right, climb t= rees=20 and navigate piles of rubble - and maybe someday, with the rats outfitted= =20 with tiny video cameras, use to search for disaster survivors. ``If you have a collapsed building and there are people under the rubble,= =20 there's no robot that exists now that would be capable of going down into= =20 such a difficult terrain and finding those people, but a rat would be abl= e to=20 do that,'' said John Chapin, a professor of physiology and pharmacology a= t=20 the State University of New York in Brooklyn. The lab animals aren't exactly robot rats. They had to be trained to carr= y=20 out the commands. Chapin's team fitted five rats with electrodes and power-pack backpacks. = When=20 signaled by a laptop computer, the electrodes stimulated the rodents' bra= ins=20 and cued them to scurry in the desired direction, then rewarded them by=20 stimulating a pleasure center in the brain. The rats' movements could be controlled up to 1,640 feet away, the length= of=20 more than five football fields. The findings appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Other researchers said the work is interesting but is an engineering feat= ,=20 not an advance in animal neuroscience. Randy Gallistel, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Rutge= rs=20 University, said it's basically the same thing, with a twist, that scient= ists=20 found they could do almost 50 years ago by stimulating the reward-sensing= =20 area of a rat's brain. ``Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that thi= s=20 kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades,'' he said. The experiments used three implanted electrodes - one in the brain region= =20 that senses reward or pleasure, and one each in areas that process signal= s=20 from the rat's left and right whisker bundles. Chapin's team trained the rats in a maze by signaling the left and right=20 whisker-sensing regions. When a rat turned in the correct direction, its=20 reward-sensing region was stimulated. Activating only the reward region caused the rodents to move forward, the= =20 team found. After training, the rats were tested in a variety of environments and=20 remotely guided through pipes and across elevated runways. They were=20 compelled to climb trees and ladders and to jump from varying heights. The rodents could even be commanded to venture into brightly lit, open ar= eas=20 - environments they normally would avoid. Howard Eichenbaum, a professor of psychology at Boston University, said t= he=20 research, while not a major advance, is ``clever'' and holds the promise = of=20 using animals as humans' ``eyes'' or as couriers to reach trapped victims. Aside from the technological challenges, he said there may be ethical=20 concerns about turning animals into ``intelligent robots'' serving humans. ``It's one thing to see a rat running around like this, people don't get = too=20 emotional about that, but as soon as you get into dogs or work animals,=20 people start getting real excited,'' he said. The potential of using such implantable electrodes to control humans - wh= ich=20 a Tulane University researcher tried during the 1960s, with unclear resul= ts -=20 is something Chapin said he opposes so strongly he believes it should be=20 illegal. Kate Rears, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center= in=20 Washington, said technological advances mean human-control technology can= no=20 longer be dismissed as far-fetched. ``I think that a lot of people are very wary of that sort of thing and=20 understandably so,'' Rears said. ``I don't think it's a sign of paranoia = to=20 react against this because it is very odd. It's Brave New Worldish.'' On the Net: Nature: http://nature.com John Chapin's lab: http://www.rybak-et-al.net/chapin.html -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org Please, *PLEASE* don't subscribe through a forward/expander/false domain
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