14 ms·

Neuroscientists Wirelessly Control the Brain of a Scampering Lab Mouse

69 points by aaronyy 10y ago

netsec_burn 10y ago
I can't help but feel sorry for the mice, I can't imagine what it would be like to not have control of your limbs. I understand the purpose is the opposite, however.
- rgarrett88 10y ago
  I would not be surprised to find out the brain backwards rationalized it and the mice from their point of view always thought they wanted to do that.
  - jxy 10y ago
    This is the real question here. Unless the mice can explain itself to us, we really have no way to know. But I'm not so sure about the ethics of conducting such experiments on humans.
    - EdSharkey 10y ago
      Yeah, what is the internal dialogue like, such as it is in a mouse? "Huh! Okay, yeah, I guess I'm going this way ... Uh, I forgot something at the nest. NO! No, I'm going to ... turn around, yeah! Turn around and around and around." Surely fear response could be measured in terms of heart rate changes or skin. It's creepy, humans are a bunch of creeps.
    - namaemuta 10y ago
      I would imagine it as a spasm. You have not control over it and you don't try to rationalize it, just accept it as something that happens to your body.
    - intended 10y ago
      This question is answered already - we have enough studies and reports of people who suffer from delusions, spasms etc. to have detailed information on outliers. Whats really going to make you lose your equlibrium is that for normal human beings, the impulse to move a limb (like a hand), preceded the conscious instruction to move it. See the Libet Experiments, (and the can of rebuttals and counter rebuttals that threw up)
  - tmp_cURL 10y ago
    Alternate possibility, and just as likely, the sensation for the mouse is that of total parlysis, except some unseen force is puppeting its limbs, and perhaps inflicting phantom limb "pins and needles" the entire time. Like an invisible older brother whispering in your ear: STOP HITTING YOURSELF. STOP HITTING YOURSELF. Powerless to resist, and strapped in for a ride that never ends.
dkarapetyan 10y ago
I understand this is valid science but at the same time I'm extremely creeped out. Seems to me like all these findings follow from some physics and chemistry and the mice didn't need to be implanted with these devices. Don't really see the point of making them go in circles either.
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  Which findings, specifically? Because I feel like the article makes a pretty good case for the benefits of studying optogenetics. These three paragraphs in particular succinctly outline that case: Neuroscientists study these patterns of electricity, but they’ve been limited by the imprecision of their tools. Much progress in biology depends on observation, which means scientists need tools to both meddle with an organism’s natural bodily systems and watch what happens. Typical neuroscience techniques rely on electricity, using electrodes on the scalp or implanted inside the brain to stimulate and record from groups of neurons. These electrodes are relatively large and crude, though, and can’t target very specific cells, such as the neurons in the hippocampus that encode distinct memories. This limitation bothers me. From an engineer’s point of view, the study of living creatures can seem messy. When I’m tinkering with an integrated circuit, I can swap out one transistor and check to see if the chip still works. If it doesn’t, I can be sure the new transistor is responsible for the glitch. In biological systems, it’s far harder to isolate a variable of interest. With optogenetic technology, we can turn neurons on and off as if they were transistors in a circuit. Geneticists have various ways (which we won’t go into here) to deposit the necessary genes into very specific clusters of cells. With our light-up devices, we can then switch on a particular set of neurons. The neurons react to light within milliseconds, making the result of our tinkering fairly obvious.
  - dkarapetyan 10y ago
    Parts that you mention are part of those findings. Seems to me all this could have been done in vitro. No mice brain cage mutilation necessary to see if a cell with some genes reacts to a certain wavelength of light.
    - 10y ago
nacc 10y ago
There is also the roboroach if you want to have a taste of this on your hand, with a cockroach. https://backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach https://backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach In the neuroscience conference they also showed a DIY optogenetic fruitfly kit, but it's a pity the channelrhodopsin transgenic fly is not available outside a neuroscience lab.
- deelowe 10y ago
  Wow. That's a neat kit.
sethbannon 10y ago
If you look more than 50 years into the past, to any civilization on earth, there are a number of behaviors and norms that were totally acceptable to the people of the time that modern man/woman would consider morally repugnant. Not allowing gays to marry, not allowing people of different races to marry, not allowing women to vote, slavery, ritual sacrifice, etc. It follows then, that there are likely things we view as morally OK that future generations of humans will condemn us for. It's a healthy exercise to imagine what those things might be. Reading about this research makes me think that this sort of animal experimentation will certainly be one of those things.
- roryisok 10y ago
  And probably eating animals. Once we have lab grown meat it'll be easy to take the moral high ground on that.
  - bitL 10y ago
    What sucks is that everything around/in us fights for survival by eating all living things it could. So even if we manage to avoid animals, plants will still send distress signals once we collect them, nuts will still contain powerful allergens, viruses will still eat us from inside etc. Simply that's how life works; to change it we would need to go beyond Universe and reprogram it from outside.
    - neom 10y ago
      "to change it we would need to go beyond Universe and reprogram it from outside." - that was quite beautiful.
    - devoply 10y ago
      Original sin was when the first living creature decided to eat another living creature instead of getting energy directly from the source like the sun or a thermal vent.
    - rifung 10y ago
      I thought the point of avoiding the consumption of animals was so we wouldn't have to murder things which have similar concepts of fear and pain as we do. Why would plants sending distress signals or nuts with allergens be an issue?
return0 10y ago
Impressive, however nature itself is even more impressive http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neuroethology_of_Parasitoid_Wasps http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neuroethology_of_Parasit...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

69 points by aaronyy 10y ago

I can't help but feel sorry for the mice, I can't imagine what it would be like to not have control of your limbs. I understand the purpose is the opposite, however.

rgarrett88 10y ago
I would not be surprised to find out the brain backwards rationalized it and the mice from their point of view always thought they wanted to do that.
- jxy 10y ago
  This is the real question here. Unless the mice can explain itself to us, we really have no way to know. But I'm not so sure about the ethics of conducting such experiments on humans.
  - EdSharkey 10y ago
    Yeah, what is the internal dialogue like, such as it is in a mouse? "Huh! Okay, yeah, I guess I'm going this way ... Uh, I forgot something at the nest. NO! No, I'm going to ... turn around, yeah! Turn around and around and around." Surely fear response could be measured in terms of heart rate changes or skin. It's creepy, humans are a bunch of creeps.
  - namaemuta 10y ago
    I would imagine it as a spasm. You have not control over it and you don't try to rationalize it, just accept it as something that happens to your body.
  - intended 10y ago
    This question is answered already - we have enough studies and reports of people who suffer from delusions, spasms etc. to have detailed information on outliers. Whats really going to make you lose your equlibrium is that for normal human beings, the impulse to move a limb (like a hand), preceded the conscious instruction to move it. See the Libet Experiments, (and the can of rebuttals and counter rebuttals that threw up)
- tmp_cURL 10y ago
  Alternate possibility, and just as likely, the sensation for the mouse is that of total parlysis, except some unseen force is puppeting its limbs, and perhaps inflicting phantom limb "pins and needles" the entire time. Like an invisible older brother whispering in your ear: STOP HITTING YOURSELF. STOP HITTING YOURSELF. Powerless to resist, and strapped in for a ride that never ends.

dkarapetyan 10y ago

I understand this is valid science but at the same time I'm extremely creeped out. Seems to me like all these findings follow from some physics and chemistry and the mice didn't need to be implanted with these devices. Don't really see the point of making them go in circles either.

derrickdirge 10y ago
Which findings, specifically? Because I feel like the article makes a pretty good case for the benefits of studying optogenetics. These three paragraphs in particular succinctly outline that case: Neuroscientists study these patterns of electricity, but they’ve been limited by the imprecision of their tools. Much progress in biology depends on observation, which means scientists need tools to both meddle with an organism’s natural bodily systems and watch what happens. Typical neuroscience techniques rely on electricity, using electrodes on the scalp or implanted inside the brain to stimulate and record from groups of neurons. These electrodes are relatively large and crude, though, and can’t target very specific cells, such as the neurons in the hippocampus that encode distinct memories. This limitation bothers me. From an engineer’s point of view, the study of living creatures can seem messy. When I’m tinkering with an integrated circuit, I can swap out one transistor and check to see if the chip still works. If it doesn’t, I can be sure the new transistor is responsible for the glitch. In biological systems, it’s far harder to isolate a variable of interest. With optogenetic technology, we can turn neurons on and off as if they were transistors in a circuit. Geneticists have various ways (which we won’t go into here) to deposit the necessary genes into very specific clusters of cells. With our light-up devices, we can then switch on a particular set of neurons. The neurons react to light within milliseconds, making the result of our tinkering fairly obvious.
- dkarapetyan 10y ago
  Parts that you mention are part of those findings. Seems to me all this could have been done in vitro. No mice brain cage mutilation necessary to see if a cell with some genes reacts to a certain wavelength of light.
  - 10y ago

nacc 10y ago

There is also the roboroach if you want to have a taste of this on your hand, with a cockroach. https://backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach https://backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach In the neuroscience conference they also showed a DIY optogenetic fruitfly kit, but it's a pity the channelrhodopsin transgenic fly is not available outside a neuroscience lab.

deelowe 10y ago
Wow. That's a neat kit.

sethbannon 10y ago

If you look more than 50 years into the past, to any civilization on earth, there are a number of behaviors and norms that were totally acceptable to the people of the time that modern man/woman would consider morally repugnant. Not allowing gays to marry, not allowing people of different races to marry, not allowing women to vote, slavery, ritual sacrifice, etc. It follows then, that there are likely things we view as morally OK that future generations of humans will condemn us for. It's a healthy exercise to imagine what those things might be. Reading about this research makes me think that this sort of animal experimentation will certainly be one of those things.

roryisok 10y ago
And probably eating animals. Once we have lab grown meat it'll be easy to take the moral high ground on that.
- bitL 10y ago
  What sucks is that everything around/in us fights for survival by eating all living things it could. So even if we manage to avoid animals, plants will still send distress signals once we collect them, nuts will still contain powerful allergens, viruses will still eat us from inside etc. Simply that's how life works; to change it we would need to go beyond Universe and reprogram it from outside.
  - neom 10y ago
    "to change it we would need to go beyond Universe and reprogram it from outside." - that was quite beautiful.
  - devoply 10y ago
    Original sin was when the first living creature decided to eat another living creature instead of getting energy directly from the source like the sun or a thermal vent.
  - rifung 10y ago
    I thought the point of avoiding the consumption of animals was so we wouldn't have to murder things which have similar concepts of fear and pain as we do. Why would plants sending distress signals or nuts with allergens be an issue?

return0 10y ago

Impressive, however nature itself is even more impressive http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neuroethology_of_Parasitoid_Wasps http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neuroethology_of_Parasit...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]