RE: Rat and a mini camera.....

["Phillips, Kevin" <Kevin.Phillips@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I saw this on the news this morning. They had an interview with Noel Sharky
(for those that have never seen Robot Wars - he's a robotics professor at
Sheffield Uni [uk]).

According to him the American Military has been doing research into this
further. Apparently rats have really good navigational abilities in the
brain, the esearch the military have/are conducting is to transplant rat
brains and place them in tanks/recon vehicles. I'm not a scientist so not
sure how this would work.

Any one else heard about this?

Kev
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Scott [SMTP:becubed@connexus.net.au]
> Sent:	Thursday, May 02, 2002 12:12 AM
> To:	millenniums-end-l@firedrake.org
> Subject:	Rat and a mini camera.....
> 
> 
> Boffins develop remote control rodents
> 
> AFP - American scientists have developed a system for remote controlling
> rats
> that could one day be used to help mine disposal experts and earthquake
> rescue
> workers, according to science journal Nature.
> 
> The discovery marries high technology to the well-known fact that
> laboratory
> animals can be trained to produce a particular reaction to an external
> cue,
> such as a bell, in order to obtain food or another reward.
> 
> Sanjiv Talwar and his colleagues at New York State University, whose study
> will
> be published in the Thursday edition of Nature, found that they could
> achieve
> similar responses from the animals by directly stimulating their brains
> with
> implanted electrodes.
> 
> They equipped the rats with "backpacks" containing a microprocessor-based
> remote-controlled
> stimulator and trained them to navigate a figure of eight maze.
> 
> They then succeeded in guiding the rats around open environments, without
> the
> boundaries and fixed choice points of the maze, at distances of up to 500
> metres
> (yards).
> 
>  "Our rats were easily guided through pipes and across elevated runways
> and
> ledges and could be instructed to climb or jump," the researchers wrote,
> adding
> that the animals could be made to perform for up to an hour at a time.
> 
> "We were also able to guide rats in systematically exploring large,
> collapsed
> piles of concrete rubble," they added.
> 
> They said the findings might have implications for new neurophysiological
> studies
> and real world applications such as earthquake rescue operations or
> landmine
> detection.
> 
> 
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