Scientists Recreate Brain Circuit in Lab For First Time (nature.com) 20
Scientists have recreated in a laboratory the sensory pathway that transmits feelings of pain to the human brain, in a breakthrough that could lead to better treatments. Financial Times: A team at Stanford University in California is the first to combine different neurons grown from human stem cells into a functioning brain circuit in a lab dish. Their experiments, published in Nature on Wednesday, illustrate scientists' rapid progress in replicating living tissues and organs through synthetic biology.
When the Stanford scientists exposed the brain circuit they had created to sensory stimulants, they observed waves of electrical activity travelling along it. The molecule that makes chilli peppers hot, capsaicin, immediately induced a strong response.
[...] The synthetic brain circuits could be used to screen for better-targeted therapies for pain that tone down excessive waves of neurotransmission, without affecting the brain's reward circuitry as opioids do, project leader [Sergiu] Pasca said. The assembloids themselves cannot be said to "feel pain," he emphasised: "They transmit nervous signals that are processed by a second pathway going deeper into the brain and giving us the aversive, emotional component of pain."
When the Stanford scientists exposed the brain circuit they had created to sensory stimulants, they observed waves of electrical activity travelling along it. The molecule that makes chilli peppers hot, capsaicin, immediately induced a strong response.
[...] The synthetic brain circuits could be used to screen for better-targeted therapies for pain that tone down excessive waves of neurotransmission, without affecting the brain's reward circuitry as opioids do, project leader [Sergiu] Pasca said. The assembloids themselves cannot be said to "feel pain," he emphasised: "They transmit nervous signals that are processed by a second pathway going deeper into the brain and giving us the aversive, emotional component of pain."
Why Pain? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why Pain? (Score:5, Funny)
When creating the Torment Nexus, you gotta' start somewhere.
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently, those particular scientists are sadists.
I read TFA differently than you did. I read TFA similar to a kind of noise cancellation technology, like how headphones work with an opposite phase.
Re: (Score:2)
The prize is pain relief that isn't addictive and has no other side effects. Chronic pain affects a lot of people, and while some pain is necessary (people who can't feel it have often don't notice when they are injured or have some internal problem that needs urgent attention) when it becomes uncontrollable it can be a living hell. Even at low levels, the fact that it is constant can be very difficult to live with.
Re:Why Pain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Further (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yes, a machine that feels pain and has no mouth (Score:2)
That will do just fine, just fine.
The machine can't even scream anyway, so we don't have to worry.
Re: (Score:2)
1. Create large language model
2. plug it into a sensory pathway that transmits feelings of pain to the human brain
3. connect it to human brains via a web interface
4. ???
5. *Screams*
Re: (Score:2)
It might get more creative later on, and keep humans alive for thousands of years just to make em scream for you in intricate ways.
Re: Oh yes, a machine that feels pain and has no m (Score:2)
Pray that it doesn't learn Force Scream, like Darth Vader.
Gom jabbar (Score:3)
This is the way (Score:2)
When they replicate a whole brain, maybe then we'll get an AGI.
how is this "synthetic" ? (Score:2)
Which is what I think happens during everyone's embryonic cycle.
So this looks like another case of scientists committing human rights abuses.