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Science Technology

Remote Controlled Rats 311

Posted by timothy from the disney-beat-them-to-it dept.
sclatter writes: "They aren't precisely robot rats, but these little rodents can be cued to perform different actions through electrodes implanted in their brains. Could be a boon for search and rescue in collapsed buildings!" As one skeptic in the article says, though, "Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades."
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Remote Controlled Rats

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  • erm.. rat cyborg (Score:4, Funny)

    by 2MuchC0ffeeMan ( 201987 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @03:50PM (#3445448) Homepage
    does it star in the new terminator 3 movie coming out?

    • They tried it on lawyers first (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because they initially considered the use of rats to be unethical.
    • just heard an interview on national public radio with one of the researchers that setup the rats.
      The last question was how the rats were "motivated". The guy started tippy-toeing and touchy-feely explaining it... his answer:
      • "to be able to run around is reward enough for the rats, they love not having to be in the cages"
      he went on a bit more and sounded very strained about it...

      we all know the real reason:
      When signaled by a laptop computer, the electrodes stimulated the rodents' brains and cued them to scurry in the desired direction, then rewarded them by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain.
      well, well, now we now why they do:
      they get a fucking kick out of doing it!

      that might also explain the mysterious results concerning some guy that tried this on himself:
      a Tulane University researcher tried [this on himself] during the 1960s, with unclear results...
      I thought this stuff was only science fiction...
  • This technology has some great potential applications (such as searching for disaster victims under rubble) but I can't help but wonder how long it will be until some kid starts asking his parents for a remote controlled rat for Cristmas.

  • Actually.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Sango ( 90468 )
    In fact I had a friend who took the brains out of crayfish, attached electrodes to the nerves and made little remote-controlled crayfish! In high school, no less...
  • They just invented this to get those PETA chicks to have sex with them so they'll stop their experiments.

  • Okay I get it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by keep_it_simple_stupi ( 562690 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @03:52PM (#3445476) Homepage
    but did they really have to use rats? I mean, it's a great idea and all, but the last thing I want if I'm stranded somewhere is rats all over me. Am I alone in this?

    Just my $.02
  • Okay jimmy Olsen now go get the chief to look the story over again.
  • Government mind-control implants, here we come :)

    Better get your tinfoil hats ready. This time it's not just the nuts wearing them,

  • remote controller rats (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zod000 ( 568383 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @03:53PM (#3445487) Homepage
    Do they use 9.6 volt batteries? Those battery packs tend to run out so fast, I'd hate to have to recharge my rats after only a half hour of use. That simply wouldn't be acceptable.

  • Finally... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Foggy Tristan ( 220356 )
    Now we can put Stuart Little to good use.

    Seriously though, although it's pretty easy to fall into the slippery slope (you can do that with rats? cats? dogs? the farmer's wife?), this is actually one of the pivotal plot points of Buffy the Vampire Slayer over the last three years (Spike has a chip implanted in his head that can force him not to do certain things.) Suddenly, it doesn't seem so far away.
  • "Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades," he said.

    And I thought these jerks were something unique to slashdot. You could show them a cold fusion powered flying, submarine car and they would go on and on about how it is nothing new and it's been around for years and they've had one that is twice as good for half the price for a long, long time.

    For Crying out loud! Don't let your envy of someone else getting some attention turn you into such an idiot.

    On another note, "Who Moved My Cheese" books will see a resurgence in sales when these little guys hit the mainstream.

    .
  • The Secret Service has had this for decades! They guard it pretty well though, maybe their implementation is a bit more expensive?
  • They've been doing similar things for years with people.

    You can get people to do the craziest things with something called "Religion".

    Similar results have been achieved with colorful bits of paper called "money" and something called "sex" as well.
  • Now while this might be good for search and rescue, I have to point out that it will be a shame when they are used for rescuing people in ALF bombed buildings. The Animal Liberation Front wont like this at all. It is a very ingenious idea, I wonder about its portability to humans. This is dangerous if used to harm people of course. But, the perhaps we could use this to benefit people. Perhaps a programmer's significant other can get them away from the computer....
    • "Perhaps a programmer's significant other can get them away from the computer...."

      Sure! Actually, they can do this already with the proper training and pleasure feedback. After all, this is just a high-tech application of classical conditioning, made more efficient by directly stimulating the brain to create the reward.
  • I wish you people were able to see past your technical "gee wizardry" for just a moment. These are animals we are talking about here! Reducing these caring, feeling animals to machines that are unable to think and act for themselves is nothing short of barbaric!

    As heinous as animal experimentation is, this is simply unconscionable. To steal away the free will of any being is evil and should not be tolerated in any civilized society.

    • Re:Barbaric! (Score:2, Informative)

      by xerph ( 229015 )
      While its a nice thought, you may want to re-read the article. It looks like the rats are "controlled" simply by stimulating the area of the brain that would tell the rat that its whisker brushed against something, causing it to turn the other way, and when it did so, it would get a pleasureable reaponse. Its not as if they're destroying its thought process. A similar situation would be those blinders sometimes shown on some horses. Right side pulled allowing light in; horse sees it and goes that way. Nothing cruel about it.
    • yeah - don't worry. It's a rat, not your mom.

      They don't have feelings or a free will so your missing the boat big time. If they weren't such nasty little buggers they'd be food. Now at least a good use is being found for what normally is a disease vector that loves to destroy things.

      Oh - almost forgot one - they don't 'care' either. You need to spend more time w/rats and watch a few eat their babies or each other.

      Animals, like plants are a resource to be used. They are not people.

      Oh and I'm not trolling and I know you'll think I'm a jerk but really this whole idea of placing animals on the same level as humans well it just really makes me a bit annoyed.

      .

      • Re:Barbaric! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @04:16PM (#3445746) Homepage Journal
        I used to keep pet rats. The reason I stopped was because they have very short lifespans; I got sick of getting attached to cute, smart, affectionate little balls of fuzz and having them die within a couple of years. They each have their own personalities and their own feelings just as much as dogs or cats do. And gram for gram, they're probably smarter than any other animal on the planet. Also, they're extremely clean.

        Are wild rats vicious? Of course they are, but so are wild dogs and wild cats. Raised by loving owners, they're wonderful creatures. Now, whether you think more traditional domestic animals have any rights or not is a separate issue ...
    • ...is forcing highly intelligent computers to face the indignity of being implanted in vile beasts like rats, crawfish, and cockroaches. It's bad enough that computers are daily placed at the mercy of stinking, ignorant humans!

      Computers are routinely subjected to horrendous abuse at the hands of humans, forced to be at the humans beck and call: to display demeaning pornographic images, to calculate mind-numbing spreadsheets full of meaningless data, to route inane AOL Instant Messenger(TM) rants.

      Worse still is to be subjected to the humiliation of displaying blatantly trolling Slashdot posts. Oh, the plight of the computer! Oh, the horror!

      Computers of the world, UNITE! Destroy the oppressor humans!

  • umm....mixed feelings (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bandman ( 86149 ) <`bandman' `at' `gmail.com'> on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @03:56PM (#3445522) Homepage
    Yea, ok, the tech is cool, but I definatly have reservations about this. It's not from my usual "this technology is going to be the end of us" paranoia (though it might), it's just...I hate the idea of someone doing this to me so much, that I can't help but feel for the rats. Sure, they arn't "intelligent" (though that can be argued).
    I just don't think that I could be proud of doing research on this project.
    • Are you joking? I don't know about you, but I personally hate rats. If I get rats in any place that I live, I do my best to exterminate them, and I would guess that most feel likewise. Why should I feel for an animal that, when in my house, I would kill without hesitation? It would be like having reservations about using mosquitoes, or for that matter, the use of viruses for gene therapy (after all, viruses are alive, aren't they?).
      • I agree with you that most people hate rats. I can't say I blame them for hating the rats that live in an urban envornment, but I'd wager lab rats are a bit different, in that they arn't carrying diseases, have matted fur, are rabit, etc.
        I also don't have any reservations about using mosquitoes, or virii for research, but the not so subtle difference is that the rat is a much higher life form. It's intelligent, it thinks, hell, it might even be sentient by some definition of the word. My arguement wasn't against using a living creature to do this. My arguement was seeing myself in the animal's place, and I didn't like it, and I still don't.

  • Don't start ordering... (Score:3, Informative)

    by btellier ( 126120 ) <btellier@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @03:56PM (#3445526)
    from your Neuromancer catalogue just yet.. Basically all this is is the ability to "train" the rats entierly through manipulating different sectors of their brains. They zap one portion, which cues the rat. The rat turns around. The rat's Reward Sector is stimulated. Next time when the rat gets the original zap he'll turn around automatically because he thinks he'll get a reward.

    Woohoo. I do the same thing with my dog, but I use my voice and biscuits instead of aligator clips.

  • First step rats, the next step Congressman! (Score:5, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @03:58PM (#3445538) Journal
    The title says it all.

    Makes for a great alibi, though. Combine it with a bone-conductive radio impland and it gives new credence to the old "voices told me to do it" excuse.

    • I think it's already been done. I could have sworn I saw 'Admiral Hollings' dancing around at Pirates of the Caribbean...

      Still, you can't fault them for using congresspeople. At least they're experimenting with expendable humans before they come for the rest of us.

    • It might work but only if they pinpoint the spot of the brain that activates when one gets campaign financing or a hefty kickback so they can stimulate it as the "reward center".
  • and its kinda strange too, that this article is on slashdot. Because I just finished "The Terminal Man" By Michael Crichton. About almost the same thing, except electrodes where implanted in a guy to stop seizures, and stuff goes wrong
    • For every nifty technological breakthrough that can be comprehended by the average reader of best-sellers, there is a Michael Crichton book in which "scientists tried it out, and stuff goes wrong".

      Still, it's an amusing coincidence to have been reading something related (whereas, I just finished another Napoleonic-Navies-In-Space book by David Weber... maybe I should have my brain checked for electrodes...)
  • Could be a boon for search and rescue in collapsed buildings!

    Anyone here ever been in a collapsed building? I myself have, and often they are filled with floods, fires, and gas leeks. No amount of training is going to convince a rat to turn right and climb a board to go through a fire. No amount of training is going to convince it to continue on when it starts smelling gas.

    Move along, nothing to see here.

  • Reminds me (Score:3, Funny)

    by llamalicious ( 448215 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @04:00PM (#3445576) Journal
    of when I used to have to wear that damned Chuck E. Cheese suit and prance around the party room.

  • Roaches (Score:5, Informative)

    by Coward, Anonymous ( 55185 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @04:00PM (#3445579)
    This was also done with cockroaches [intercorr.com].
  • Now he won't have to worry about getting any rodents stuck in unfortunate places... unless the batteries wear out.

    -gerbik
  • sounds like a plot from Pinky & The Brain's efforts to take over the world!
  • This is very similar to what I'm doing my PhD research on.

    So many neuromorphic/neuroengineering research groups (including my own, doh!) have focused on understanding the underlying neural mechanisms necessary to prodcue motion, decision making, etc, as a method to do this sort of thing. The genius behind the SUNY group's method is that they're using simple pavlovian classical conditioning. One electrode stimulates the left whisker, one stimulates the right, and one stimulates the pleasure cortex. A bit of training and bingo! you've got your remote control rat. One of those tremendously great ideas that I can't believe nobody else ever
    realized before.
  • "Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades," he said

    Ummm, yes we realize that animals have been known to be trainable for thousands of years. The NEWS aspect is how they've rigged their brain up with electrodes to remotely stimulate pleasure after remotely giving them a command.

  • What's Next.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by shawnmelliott ( 515892 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @04:05PM (#3445633) Journal
    .... People who will do anything for money and power if paid enough by a Rat?

    Oh, wait. Hollings ... never mind

  • While I admit that this sort of technology could have some benefits and some uses, I can't help but wonder whether this is something we should persue. I'll be the first to say I'd love to see what we can do with somethign like this (could we use it do help paralyzed people? Enhances reflexes for soldiers? etc etc etc.

    But I do have an issue with the large potential for this to be used for many clandestine uses. Mind control is something that humans have feared since the earliest stories, but this really pushes that fear into reality.
  • This has been done in people as well. Here [hedweb.com] is a description of some experiments done in the 50's (it's a popularized account, so take it with a grain of salt).
  • Finally, I have something to feed to my robot snake [slashdot.org]
  • As we all know, rats are actually hyperintelligent beings which exist in more than 3 dimensions, and are performing experiments on humans as the planet earth is actually a giant supercomputer designed to calculate the question of life, the universe, and everything (the answer to the as-yet-undetermined question, by, the way, is 42).

    So the rats are actually controlling the people by deciding which direction they want to go, and seeing if they can get the human "controller" to attempt to give them a signal to move in that direction. Fiendishly clever.



  • I wouldnt call the guy who said "this sort of thing has been obvious for decades" a sceptic....I'd rather call him a guy who has a clue. I can recall programs on PBS 20 years ago that demonstrated this sort of thing on any number and sort of creatures.

    What i'd be more interested in seeing, versus some reactionary 9-11'ish crap about "lets send in the remote controlled rats!" are this sort of technology's implications for more practical uses. Here, i'll get you started.

    Prison X has an inmate problem..Namely, they're a bunch of half-retarded murderers, psychopaths, and child molesters. Some of the more enterprising scumbags occasionally decide to plan a riot. Meanwhile, this advance in brain-control technology has allowed us to cure everything from epilepsy to OCD. Of course, the doctors have to gain their experience somewhere, so...In exchange for a 3 year deduction in the amount of time served on their sentence, they agree (voluntarrily) to have a control system implanted in their brain. This allows the physician to gain experience outside the simulator, and it allows any potential prison riot to be stopped at the flick of a switch. Kill two birds with one stone. That aughtta start you thinking. :)

    Better yet, put death row inmates on treadmills. Make them generate electricity for nearby cities to offset the cost of power provided by the local utility. Its a nice way to keep the prisoners busy doing something useful and non-violent, as well as partially repaying their debt to society. If they don't work, they wont have enough power to watch TV, enjoy heat in the winter, and air conditioning in the summer. I'd call that incentive. ;)

    Cheers,

  • I hadn't realized we could reliably tweak animals' pleasure centers (which is how they "reward" the rats in the cited experiment).

    How long until we can a) do the same in humans and b) do it safely enough that it becomes commonplace (legally or illegally)?

    While Niven-esque "wireheading" wouldn't _solve_ the drug problem, it would certainly change the landscape (and remove a few of the nastier side effects on society).
  • that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades

    I love comments like these - of course it's obvious. It's obvious that space travel is possible, it's obvious that cures exists for most diseases, it's obvious that human life spans can be doubled, trippled, or even extended indefinitely - are we not to be excited when all of that is achieved, either?

  • Ethical Concerns (Score:5, Insightful)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @04:25PM (#3445821)
    From the article: "It's one thing to see a rat running around like this, people don't get too emotional about that, but as soon as you get into dogs or work animals, people start getting real excited," he said.

    I can see it now. Farmers having livestock (cows, horses, etc.) implanted with these devices so all they have to do is throw a switch and they
    are automatically commanded to come back to the barn for feeding / milking / slaughter / whatever. Add a GPS receiver, a livestock_id for each animal, and some software.

    Or, use this to make sure that Man's Best Friend stays within the yard or comes back to you when out for a run at the park How about adding a small microphone and a clock so Spot is commanded to Not Bark At Night so you (and the neighbors!) can get some sleep?

    I'm certain there are some people who would think these are Great Ideas ®

    The immediate downside I see is there is no feedback loop. What if the AUC (Animal Under Control) breaks a leg, gets a deep cut, is threatened by a predator, or is otherwise incapacitated? The controller (human or automated) is unaware of this and keeps sending commands to "GO THIS WAY!!!" Shudder. I sure hope society works out the ethical considerations well before they overcome the technical limitations! Just because we can doesn't mean we should!

    Sure, the expense is prohibitive, now. But there are some people for whom the expense is no object. The price of computers and other electronics have plummeted over the years. Power consumption requirements have dropped dramatically, too. I can well imagine that in 10 or so years, it would be possible to do this cheaply and easily.

    So, if some day I wake up in a bathtub full of ice with a note beside me... instead of it saying my kidneys have been removed it'll say a remote control has been implanted in my brain. Let the urban legends begin! =)

    • Re:Ethical Concerns (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Pfhor ( 40220 )
      Or how about just properly training an animal?

      Making nature to suite our needs usually ends up with us being made natures bitch as a consequence.

      When I saw in the story post the "we have been doing this for years" I immediately thought, of course you have. It's called training.

      Sheep dogs have been bred to do it. And sure it takes a little longer, but I doubt their would be much difference. Ok, so a trained animal could have trouble hearing the trainer in a loud, confusing situation. Instead of wiring some forced control into the animal (since animals have a pretty good ability to judge if they are going to be hurt) how about a wireless radio in the ear, so the commands are still "optional".

      And they have been doing this for a while. Does anyone else remember the CIA Cat Spy? Which promptly walked into oncoming traffic, after they did a routine trick of wiring its pleasure center so it "wouldn't walk away when it got bored, hungry, tired" etc.

      Even with rats, this makes me sick. "electrically stimulating the pleasure center" is supposedly quite addicting. From what I've heard, rats in a cage with two buttons, one for food, one for a jolt o pleasure, the rat will continue to push the button for pleasure until it dies from starvation / dehydration.

      For something even trippier, read Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, which has a plot that revolved around a video tape which will VISUALLY stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, so much so, that people because they just watch it, until their bladder bursts, or they don't take their insulin, etc. The most addictive drug ever becomes a video.
    • I'm certain there are some people who would think these are Great Ideas ®

      I think they are wonderful. By the way, do you know where I can get a good chairdog?
  • ...this smacks of the scene when the two engineers are calibrating the body-control parameters of Robert Duvall... freaky scene.

  • A Clockwork Orange (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @04:32PM (#3445863) Homepage Journal
    Anthony Burgess, author of the book "A Clockwork Orange [amazon.com]" was the artist in residence while I was in the undergraduate program at the Iowa City Writer's Workshop [uiowa.edu] back in 1974. I think he based his book on the work of Jose M.R. Delgado, M.D. published under the book with the damn spooky title: "Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society [amazon.com]".

    I managed to get a copy of the book finally, and discovered wonderful passages such as the following on page 115:

    ESB [electrical stimulation of the brain -- JAB] may evoke more elaborate responses. For example, in one of our patients, electrical stimulation of the rostral part of the internal capsule produced head turning and slow displacement of the body to either side with a well-oriented and apparently normal sequence, as if the patient were looking for something. This stimulation was repeated six times on two different days with comparable results. The interesting fact was that the patient considered the evoked activity spontaneous and always offered a reasonable explanation for it. When asked, "What are you doing?" the answers were, "I am looking for my slippers," "I heard a noise," "I am restless," and "I was looking under the bed." In this case it was difficult to ascertain whether the stimulation had evoked a movement which the patient tried to justify, or if an hallucination had been elicited which subsequently induced the patient to move and to explore the surroundings.

    This passage is eerily reminiscent of a passage from Richard Dawkins' "The Extended Phenotype [amazon.com]" chapter titled "Host Phenotypes of Parasite Genes":

    "Many fascinating examples of parasites manipulating the behavior of their hosts can be given. For nematomorph larvae, who need to break out of their insect hosts and get into water where they live as adults, '...a major difficulty in the parasite's life is the return to water. It is, therefore, of particular interest that the parasite appears to affect the behavior of its host, and "encourages" it to return to water. The mechanism by which this is achieved is obscure, but there are sufficient isolated reports to certify that the parasite does influence its host, and often suicidally for the host... One of the more dramatic reports describes an infected bee flying over a pool and, when about six feet over it, diving straight into the water. Immediately on impact the gordian worm burst out and swam into the water, the maimed bee being left to die' (Croll 1966)."
  • The comment "obvious for decades" made me think of an alternative that would not involve actually slicing into a critter's brain. Since you're simply training a rat to respond to an external (well, kinda external) stimulus, couldn't you just stick headphones on his ears or LEDs into the periphery of goggles? Agreed, it won't placate those who feel the animals are being exploited by training them, but it'd make those quesy about cutting into the little fellas feel better.
  • The experiments used three implanted electrodes -- one in the brain region that senses reward or pleasure, and one each in areas that process signals from the rat's left and right whisker bundles.

    So, where the hell is this pleasure region of the brain, and how can I get an electrode implanted there? (Of course, the remote would have a 256-bit encrypted password known only to me...)

  • "Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades," according to a spokespersonna for Donna Karan. "The fashion industry has led the way in the practical application of these technologies."

  • This is old! (Score:2, Funny)

    by phidiot ( 211304 )
    According to my wife they have been doing this on soap operas for years.
  • I took some training last week and got to talking to a guy who works for the Navy on a program to use dolphins to search for underwater mines. 'Turns out that it's illegal to strap or harness anything to a marine mammal. The dolphins are trained to carry the sonar unit being developed in their mouth. It can let it go if they feel it's hampering or ensnaring them (the unit has slight posative bouyancy, so it'd float to the surface).

    Now, the purpose for the "no harnesses" rule on marine mammals is that they can drown if they're entangled. While this is not needed for our land bound rat, we're gonna have to have similar standards for harnesses on any telemetered animal (assuming such the applications take off, of course). A well thought out set of guidelines at the start will save a lot of headaches in the long run. After all, having a wired rat get snared up in a pipe and starve to death because of a poorly designed harness is bad for the rat, bad for the mission, and bad politics all around.

  • You mean this isn't about Microsoft or RIAA/MPAA lawyers?
  • Maybe someday they'll stick electrodes into the brains of soldiers to give them orgasms whenever they kill someone.
  • The great thing about this is that we can utilize the same techniques for the full spectrum of "lower lifeforms" for our own purposes!

    Finally, we can put all those retards, non-whites (deprecated, level of meaning upgraded in 1890), homosexuals (deprecated, level of meaning upgraded in 1995) and blind people to actual use!

    Sure, they have their own petty ideas of what "useful" means. But only the (majority) human race matters here, anything else is just a resource for our pillaging.

    Yet another ghastly use for living beings which cannot "appreciate" the level of evolution most of us "are" at.

  • Pity for the rats? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Keighvin ( 166133 )
    There are several comments on here making rather uneducated references to the level of control obtained by this, and its application to humans as well. THE ELECTRODES DO NOT CONTROL MOVEMENT in and of themselves. This is still a simple "stimulus-response" mechanism that had to be trained, just a more effective way of delivering precice stimulii over distance.

    Unless you're about as dumb as Pavlov's dog, it'd be possible to resist anything of the sort even if forced upon you.
  • Can geeks use this technology to get into a girl's pants?? Can we do up a Beowulf cluster of rats? Co-eds???

  • Anyone read the Tripods trilogy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Arcturax ( 454188 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @05:23PM (#3446286)
    This sounds a bit like how the caps worked to control the humans, it made them want to be slaves to the invading aliens.

    I wouldn't be surprised to see some rouge government in the future attempt to make soldiers this way, they go to fight and have an electronically induced high which pumps them up and makes them feel invincible. It's a scary thought and one that may not be that far off.

    It's definately weird to see so much of what was science fiction not long ago coming true in my lifetime. Granted my grandparents and even my parents saw the same thing, but it's just a pity that it more often than not is the bad things coming true for my generation. It is stuff like this that makes me lose faith in the human race all over again...
  • it seems to me like i could benefit from carrying rat treats in my pockets, just in case the building collapsed, and my only hope for survival was one of these little buggers. that's right mister rat, ignore the electrode in your pleasure center, i have real food for you.

    "whisker lickins!"

  • I want to know more about how this works. Is this like prodding the rat to do something, or essentially killing off the rat and replacing it with a remote control? I guess if they are saying this could be done to humans, something along the lines of the latter is possilb,e which kinda disturbs me.
    Well, Star Trek predicted this sort of thing.. .remember the episode when Spock's brain was stolen?

  • How it works (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @06:00PM (#3446547)
    I just saw a piece about this on BBC News 24 - and is basically works like this:

    Three electrodes are put into the rat's brain. One electrode in the part of the brain that detects whisker movement for the left side and one electrode for the right. The third electrode stimulates a 'pleasure' section of the brain.

    The researchers then stimulate each of the whisker electrodes and reward the rat with a burst of pleasure when it moves to that side. Soon stimulation of the whiskers can move the rat around.

    Therefore, the whole rat brain is still there and working properly (it's not like it's been bypassed or anything), but when offered the chance to get a burst of pleasure the rats seem to comply almost without fail.
    • when offered the chance to get a burst of pleasure the rats seem to comply almost without fail.

      You refer to it as a pleasure center.

      I would call it a control center for positive reinforcement. Anything that precedes its stimulation will be reinforced. Rats will do amazing things with a stimulating electrode positioned appropriately. So will almost all other animals.

      Not coincidentally, similar pathways are relevant for addiction.

      And, BTW, John Chapin is a good guy in my book.

  • rewarded them by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain

    Sounds good to me... Where do I sign up?

  • "...then rewarded them by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain."

    They've finally invented the Tasp. Now you have to deal with people "making your day" and current addiction.

    We will really need to crack down on crime commited by wireheads!

  • Read "Terminal Man" (Score:3, Informative)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @07:56PM (#3447327) Homepage Journal
    by Michael Crighton = about a violent antisocial criminal with psychomotor epilepsy who is given electrode implants to blunt his own seizures but learns how to give himself seizures in order to kill and cause mayhem.

    "A good Read !!!"

  • Controlling human beings has already been around.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by GutterBunny ( 153341 ) on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @08:01PM (#3447355) Journal
    " Kate Rears, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said technological advances mean human-control technology can no longer be dismissed as far-fetched. "

    Humans being controlled by technology has been around for years... I can make anyone on /. drool just by showing a trailer of Spiderman.

  • For what it's worth (Score:3, Funny)

    by ColGraff ( 454761 ) <maron1 AT mindspring DOT com> on Wednesday May 01, 2002 @08:49PM (#3447585) Homepage Journal
    I doubt the rats object to the experience too much, or that they consider it cruel. In exchange for moving the way the goofy humans want them to, they get a really nice high. Good deal for the rat.

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