Scientists Grew Mini Brains...Trained Them to Solve Engineering Problem

[OneEyedDiva]

The "organoids" were from animal tissue. not human. What do you think of this? Is it a good thing, a scary thing or both? Here are excerpts from the article.
At the beginning of the article:
"A few blobs of lab-grown brain tissue have demonstrated a striking proof of concept: living neural circuits can be nudged toward solving a classic control problem through carefully structured feedback.

In a closed-loop system that delivered electrical feedback based on performance, cortical organoids could steadily improve their control of a classic engineering benchmark: balancing an unstable virtual pole.

Toward the end of the article:
The improvement is far from a functioning hybrid biocomputer. But as a proof of concept, it shows that neural tissue in a dish can be adaptively tuned through structured feedback – a result that could help researchers probe how neurological disease alters the brain's capacity for plasticity."

"Ash's software could build a larger community around adaptive organoid computation. But we want to make it clear that our goal is to advance brain research and the treatment of neurological diseases, not to replace robotic controllers and other kinds of computers with lab-grown animal brain tissues," says bioinformatician David Haussler of UC Santa Cruz.

"The latter might be considered cool, but would bring up serious ethical issues, especially if human brain organoids were used."

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-grew-mini-brains-then-trained-them-to-solve-an-engineering-problem

@bobcat @feywon

 

[Tish]

It has to make you wonder about where ethics come into it, if at all.
Thank you for posting this.

 

[Aunt Bea]

What could go wrong?



Something like this might eventually help people with severe brain damage, Alzheimer’s, etc… to regain control of their lives.

I agree that there are many ethical concerns, just because we have the knowledge and resources to do things doesn’t mean that we should do them.

 

[smiley]

man wanting to play God yet again I would say - NO we are not the most supreme in the universe and better get used to it!!

 

[timoc]

I've had a mini-brain for many years and it's still shrinking.

 

[Paladin1950]

There are obviously people in politics in various countries who were born with mini brains. There is one in our country who I thought didn't have a brain at all. I stand corrected. The person has a mini brain.

 

[bobcat]

The "organoids" were from animal tissue. not human. What do you think of this? Is it a good thing, a scary thing or both? Here are excerpts from the article.
At the beginning of the article:
"A few blobs of lab-grown brain tissue have demonstrated a striking proof of concept: living neural circuits can be nudged toward solving a classic control problem through carefully structured feedback.

In a closed-loop system that delivered electrical feedback based on performance, cortical organoids could steadily improve their control of a classic engineering benchmark: balancing an unstable virtual pole.

Toward the end of the article:
The improvement is far from a functioning hybrid biocomputer. But as a proof of concept, it shows that neural tissue in a dish can be adaptively tuned through structured feedback – a result that could help researchers probe how neurological disease alters the brain's capacity for plasticity."

"Ash's software could build a larger community around adaptive organoid computation. But we want to make it clear that our goal is to advance brain research and the treatment of neurological diseases, not to replace robotic controllers and other kinds of computers with lab-grown animal brain tissues," says bioinformatician David Haussler of UC Santa Cruz.

"The latter might be considered cool, but would bring up serious ethical issues, especially if human brain organoids were used."

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-grew-mini-brains-then-trained-them-to-solve-an-engineering-problem

@bobcat @feywon

My view after reading the article is that it is merely experiments to understand how biological nerve cells learn. It's not like playing mad scientist or anything of the sort. It is just neural conditioning. The organoids are just responding to stimulus and coordinating response. It's kind of like a flower bending toward the sun (Reward). There is no "thinking" in the classical sense. It is just like the first rung on a very long ladder.

Very simple primitive life forms also had these mechanisms, but they are a very distant ancestor of the human brain which requires an extremely complex network and organizer (Hippocampus) of long-term memory and much more. This is just reflex learning by neural tissue and an attempt to understand the science behind it. It's pretty cool though.

 

[JBR]

If there's much to the story(?). Quite aside from it being worthwhile to consider the ethical and other dimensions of this news, I couldn't help being just a little amused.

"Scientists Grew Mini Brains... Trained Them to Solve Engineering Problem" When I was a teenager, friends and I would see this sort of title on the front-page of a tacky newsstand tabloid, and laugh as we continued our walk down the sidewalk. It all seemed, then, like off-the-wall balderdash. And maybe it still is. I'm still waiting for more info about Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill's 'space colonies by the year 2000' not to mention Bigfoot and the Himalayan Yeti.