The Robot With a Rat's Brain

Sounds like a particularly bad B movie, but this is real:

"A 'Frankenrobot' with a biological brain"

AFP (August 13, 2008)

"PARIS (AFP) — Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.

"Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.

"Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP...."

The "brain" is grown from nerve cells removed from rat foetuses, and encouraged to grow over a set of electrodes.

Gordon isn't very smart, even by rat standards, but the technology is remarkable.

I'll admit that Gordon is a very seriously spooky bit of technology, but I see potential in this. If the neuron-to-electronics interface that Gordon uses can be used with human beings, we could have much more useful artificial limbs: and maybe be able to deal more effectively with some problems in the nervous system.