Building Better Rat Brains

I had a friend in college who spent a lot of time dissecting frozen rat brains (or something), which I always thought was funny but she swore was part of important neurological research. Today, though, I see that rat brain research is indeed paying off with scientists announcing verifiable improvement in rat memory:

Though still a long way from being tested in humans, the implant demonstrates for the first time that a cognitive function can be improved with a device that mimics the firing patterns of neurons. In recent years neuroscientists have developed implants that allow paralyzed people to move prosthetic limbs or a computer cursor, using their thoughts to activate the machines. In the new work, being published Friday, researchers at Wake Forest University and the University of Southern California used some of the same techniques to read neural activity. But they translated those signals internally, to improve brain function rather than to activate outside appendages.

"It's technically very impressive to pull something like this off, given our current level of technology," said Daryl Kipke, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the experiment. "We are just scratching the surface when it comes to interacting with the brain, but this experiment shows what's possible and the great potential of interacting with the brain in this way."

The initial idea here seems to be that if you could make this technology workable for human patients that it could treat dementia. And certainly breakthroughs in aging-related illness would be a huge win for a world that's going to have a much higher share of elderly people thirty years from now than it does today. But I also think this general line of inquiry helps indicate why replacement of human beings with robots is somewhat less likely than people sometimes think. In the future, not only will we be able to build better machines, we'll be able to build better human beings.