Lab Rats Given "Sixth Sense" 78
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the because-they-can dept.
from the because-they-can dept.
puddingebola writes "Researchers have given lab rats the ability to sense infrared light through a brain implant. From the article, 'They taught the rats to choose the active light source by poking their noses into a port to receive a sip of water as a reward. They then implanted the microelectrodes, each about a tenth the diameter of a human hair, into the animals' brains. These electrodes were attached to the infrared detectors. The scientists then returned the animals to the test chamber. At first, the rats scratched at their faces, indicating that they were interpreting the lights as touch. But after a month, the animals learned to associate the signal in their brains with the infrared source.'"
this is opening the door (Score:1)
to all sorts of nightmarish brain interfaces
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You mean like the Necomimi wearable brain watching cat-ears?
But they are so cool! They perk up when you are interested in something! They twitch when you are thinking hard!
You can learn how to control them(I mean control yourself!)
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Just drop some acid then :)
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Re:this is opening the door (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if you choose to see it this way.
I see brain-computer interface as a monumental step to improving our lives. We can construct sensors for virtually every stimuli there is, but could never reach the level of comfort and impressiveness that our natural senses give us. But with this, imagine what we can do for those people that lose their limbs, eyes or suffer horrific burns to their skin. We may even be able to restore movement to people with paralysis!
Imagine being able to interact with your desktop without risk of Repetitive Stress Injuries. Imagine having the ability to directly jack in to robots in hostile environments. Imagine what kind of augmentations we can add. This could even be first steps towards having a choice of immortality!
Biotech is such a quickly developing area. It is a very exciting time to be alive! You just need to avoid focusing on only negatives. Every scientific development has both good and bad sides: Nuclear fission did bring us terrifying weapons, but also a source of energy.
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Brother Cavil in the series Battlestar Galactica put it quite succinctly:
I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!
Now, I'm not saying we should become machines ourselves, but it does not take a genius to imagine what experiences might be possible in our lives if we were to integrate technology into our bodies much more than we are now.
Imagine scouring the web with a mere thought, absorbing information directly without the inconvenience of reading text from a screen. Imagine playing a game that feels real without a clunky VR headset or a cave, and
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Tracking and identifying (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA says "a new sensory input can be interpreted by a region of the brain that normally does something else," but isn't the input just being "converted" into the sense of touch by activating that region of the brain?
Re:Tracking and identifying (Score:5, Informative)
You see with your brain too. If someone draws a simple picture on your palm or back, you can still "see" it in your mind.
See also: http://discovermagazine.com/2003/jun/feattongue [discovermagazine.com]
The brain is able to learn to see whether the picture is generated by touch or sound.
And even with sound there are different ways for seeing,
echolocation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLziFMF4DHA [youtube.com]
and some software that converts images to pitch and left-right volume: http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm [seeingwithsound.com]
Maybe what they could try is implant a sensory array to baby/young rats and see if they can add a extra video input to rats.
Re:Tracking and identifying (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Figure 2A: Learning curve for IR-only trials. Graph shows percentage of correct trials as a function of session number (130 sessions in four rats). Black circles/lines indicate mean/s.e.m. for blocks of three sessions."
And there are 15 datapoints if you look at the chart. So there should be 4*3*15=180 sessions, yet there are only 130 total. That makes it seem like they failed to collect data on 27% of trials for some reason. What is the explanation for this? I mean stuff happens so its fine to be missing s
It is not 6 (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is that stupid term "Sixth Sense" still used?
1) Sight
2) Hearing
3) Touch
4) Taste
5) Smell
6) Balance
7) Temperature
and there are several others. So it is not a "Sixth Sense"
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There are many, many senses. And we're discovering more all the time.
Re:It is not 6 (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot 8) Humor
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You forgot 9) Irony
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You forgot the one that more people are lacking than any other....
10) Common Sense
Re:It is not 6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that stupid term "Sixth Sense" still used?
About 3000 years or so of cultural heritage, combined with general apathy on the subject from the public at large. The alliteration doesn't hurt, either.
Have fun tilting at those windmills.
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About 3000 years or so of cultural heritage, combined with general apathy on the subject from the public at large. The alliteration doesn't hurt, either.
Have fun tilting at those windmills.
Well, if he's lacking Sense#8 (balance), he sure is going to tilt.
[for those lacking Sense#37 (puns), yes I do know the alternate meanings of "tilt"]
Re:It is not 6 (Score:5, Funny)
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7 is also reserved for historic reasons, I believe.
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Yeah. Often Temperature is folded into touch, and balance is folded into a more general category of proprioception which includes the ability to tell the position and motion of body parts in space without having to look at them all the time, as well as whether the body parts are touching each other or moving on an intersecting path.
Personally I think smell and taste should be folded together. Really bad smells are often tasted, and without a sense of smell, taste loses so much acuity all it's really usefu
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I sense a pedant in the wings.
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If the rats are forced to perform this trick, "to receive a sip of water as a reward", I believe the rats will also develop a strong sense of anger. Poor critters, starved of water by evil scientists.
Thirsty rats will probably get quite onery . . . they might be tempted to take a drink from one of those big "bags of mostly water" in the white coats.
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I know a rat that tried it once . . .
Re:It is not 6 (Score:4, Interesting)
>I used to think this as well, but balance is derived from touch (it's the movement of hair in your inner ear) and temperature would be as well.
I totally disagree. Balance is a separate function that can be had or lost, separately from touch (pressure). And temperature really has nothing to do with touch. If you were going to go that route, then smell and taste are the same, since they are both chemical detection receptors. And hearing and balance and touch are the same because they ALL involve moment detection.
All these things come from nerve sensations, but that doesn't make them the same sense.
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I would think that most of us would have actually tried at curiosity filled age of childhood - I did and I could still taste... Sure you can't taste as well when you have, for example, common flu and can't smell but the connection between the two doesn't mean they are totally dependant on each other.
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Well, you beat me to this. But I can answer the question.
Because in kindergarten -- or elementary school if your school system sucks -- very young children are taught 5. They are taught 5 because they are very young, and teaching 20 would be difficult.
Unfortunately, you live in a world where adults forget that what was taught in school isn't anywhere near complete. So they think there are 5 senses, atoms are round, primary colours are red, yellow, blue, and tarrot cards mean something.
What we need to do
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I'm not sure that temperature sensation in humans is actually directed detecting EM energy. But I couldn't actually find out much about how thermoreceptors work.
Apparently there are six different heat sensitive channels (Trp) in the membranes of the thermoreceptor, which at certain temperatures let ions into the cell, triggering an action potential. Some of these are activated by capsaican, which is why chili feels hot.
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I don't know. I'd understand it for a newspaper article, but this is the type of thing that nearly every Slashdotter knows. The story submitters and editors seem to be a different population than the commenters.
It seems we get the idiots to chose and edit the story, and get the slightly smarter idiots to make the comments.
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did you understand the concept being conveyed?
then the phrasing did its job.
Can they get me (Score:4, Funny)
The ability to sense when my children are misbehaving? That would be more helpful than infrared, I think.
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Here is a 9v battery. Just apply directly to the brain.
Should be 99% accurate.
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50% of the time, it works every time!
Re:Can they get me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed, when I was a wee child I used to be baffled about why parents were always there when we (me & my lil sis) "did something" and tried to be quiet but not when we were making noise - took a while to understand and feel dumb about it =)
In Soviet Russia (Score:1)
rats give YOU a "sixth sense"!!!
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Does the ratty sense tingle?
My god, this is almost as amazing (Score:1)
Would it *HAVE* to map to an existing sense? (Score:3)
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From an evolutionary perspective, sounds legit. The first sense a multicellular organism would have would be Taste/smell (really the same chemical receptor sense). eventually, as a nervous system would develop, getting a dedicated Taste/smell system setup would be important. To understand environment, touch would then come about. To detect prey and avoid predators, chromatophores would start to become light sensetive, and in an evolutionary arms race, lens and dedicated retinas and eyeballs for fast tra
N.I.M.H. (Score:2)
Flowers for (Score:4, Interesting)
Nicodemus and becomes...intelligent.
Algernon (was the first).
So they can... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So they can... (Score:5, Funny)
No, but they can see red people.
(*rimshot*)
Tagged "Entertainment"? WTF (Score:3)
Menzoberranzan (Score:1)
Some claim (Score:1)
Could be adapted for implanting in politicians (Score:2)
Great tool for positive reinforcement in our congress critters. Still, science fiction teaches us it is always better to stimulate the pain receptors!
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Great tool for positive reinforcement in our congress critters. Still, science fiction teaches us it is always better to stimulate the pain receptors!
(a) you don't read a wide-enough variety of SciFi .
(b) Congresscritters are quite good enough at handling positive reinforcement -- in the form of $$. But so far as I can tell, they disdain water in favor of alcohol at all times.
That would be one of the regular five. (Score:2)
smbc (Score:1)
useless until we can increase brain capacity (Score:1)