>Fair enough. But, getting back to the mechanical, and the main topic
>of this particular thread -- rat neurons controlling electronics --
>what concerns me is that the emphasis in the research is likely to be
>much more on generating research grant proposals than on developing
>any useful applications.
That comes for free with it, sure, but OTOH we do have many examples where the system
did produce results.
If the car make a noise, no reason to dump the car and walk, better fix the problem.
In my previous reply I was sort of referring to 'the thing that keeps us alive'.
I have my own little theory, and I think this would make for an interesting experiment.
I will try to explain it here in a simple way:
You know, when they want to know if somebody is still alive, they look at brain activity.
If no more brain activity, then the person is considered dead.
Still organs can be used for transplants if done quick enough.
That brain activity is perhaps measured with electrodes (looking for electrical signals).
There are all sorts of wave patterns in our brain, different ones for waking, sleeping,
and deep sleep for example.
Some are periodic, like a sine wave from an oscillator.
Now here comes the interesting part, I asked myself: 'What can be so that it can stop all of the sudden,
can produce a continuous wave pattern, and have its pattern for example influenced by external events?'.
As this also goes to sci.electronics.basics, let me introduce the 'oscillator'.
An oscillator is made up of one or more stages of amplification (say gain), the output feeding
back to the input.
You all know oscillation (for the other newsgroups, bring a microphone close to a speaker,
and you get a howling noise (frequency), you have connected an input (mike) to an output (speaker) ).
Now to bring this back to that dish of rat neurons, WHAT IF you did not simply blob those together,
but made a so called 'ring oscillator' like this, first make a string of neurons connected like this:
A *************** B
Now if you stimulate A in some way, then a little later B will respond,
the 'message' is passed on from one neuron to the other.
Now the clue of what I am trying to say:
Fold the string, connect B to A.
With some luck (enough 'gain' the neurons will have to give a sufficient strong response to
an input, so they can trigger the next one), and the correct _phase_, it will become a ring oscillator.
Instead of some like dead laying about neurons, we now have a network that displays one of those
same mysterious 'brain waves' that we do.
It activates itself, so it does not wither-away in that sense because of lack of stimuli.
So now we have a figure 'O' neuron net, and touching (stimulating) any point on the O
will sooner or later be experienced by all participating neurons.
Communication in the network is happening at a fixed speed.
When we go a step further we can have a figure eight '8' and now there are 2 possible signal
flows.
One is to follow the '8' as you draw it, if we stimulate bottom left, that signal will travel to top right
first, then via top left to bottom right, while, the symmetry, consider the left side eyes, (light sensitive)
and the right actuators....
The other oscillating mode is 2 circles, the top and bottom of the eight operating as 2 independent circuits.
In this second case, there will be a continuous conflict in the crossing point of the eighth....
In the first case there will be harmony.
Our network will have two states it can be in....
This is not a bad thing, it is actually a requirement, as we also have 2 states of perception, but
that is for a different posting altogether.
So, life as we know it could be just an oscillator (and radiate EM waves too).
Killing any neuron in the chain will stop the oscillation,
a defective or under performing neuron would too.
Do we have, in the depth of our brain, this essential little oscillator?
For the electronic minded here, here is an example of a simple ring oscillator, running
in spice simulator:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/rgb.jpg
