UF SCIENTIST: “BRAIN” IN A DISH ACTS AS AUTOPILOT, LIVING COMPUTER

This article describes an experiment where living mouse neurons are placed in a dish over a grid of electrodes. The electrodes are hooked up to the controls of a flight simulator. The attitude of the aircraft is fed back to the electrodes so the neourons can both sense the position of the aircraft and control it. The cells from a neural network and quickly learn how to control the simulated aircraft. They learn to keep it straight and level in different weather conditions.

The goal is to understand how neurons and neural networks learn, but what they actually created is new class of computer. This may be the first completely generalized man-made biological computing device.