I found the article Breakthrough: A robot brain implanted in a rodent, to be very interesting. Scientist Matti Mintz, of Tel Aviv University, has recently used technology to implant a robotic cerebellum, a part of the brain that is responsible for movement, into the skull of rodents with brain damage. This allowed the rodent to gain back ability for movement. This cyborg cerebellum consists of a computer chip that is electrically wired into the rat’s brain with electrodes. The chip was then programmed to take in sensory information from the body, interpret it, and communicate messages back out to the brain stem and as well as the rest of the body. Matti says, “It’s proof of the concept that we can record information from the brain, analyze it in a way similar to the biological network, and then return it to the brain”.
The information that is retained in this article affects humanity in general. The ability to now reactivate and restore a part of the brain will in the future make it possible to prolong and preserve many lives. This new outbreak could alter the future of medicine and lead to many new inventions to help humanity. This new breakthrough may be able to save cancer patients and others who have lost parts of their brain in serious accidents.
I believe this article was very well written; it had all the main ideas captured to understand the concept of this new breakthrough. The article did so in a very simplistic way so that no background knowledge was necessary before reading the article. Although it would have been nice to have some sort of knowledge on how it led them to this discovery and more about what it will do the medicinal technology in the upcoming years, it was a very good article. Maybe this new breakthrough will lead us the answer to cancer.
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2011/10/03/breakthrough_a_robot_brain_implanted_in_a_rodent.html
Overall, I think Katie did a wonderful job reviewing this article. The way Katie presented her review was very organized, and there for very easy to read. She incorporated all the main points of the article in a very clear and concise way. Also, I think Katie’s addition of the quote in her review was nice, and was a good addition to help the reader understand the article.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are a few things I would recommend that Katie do to improve her review. I would suggest that Katie mention the tests done by the scientists to prove that this chip worked. Mentioning these tests would prove to the reader of this review that the chip worked. Also, I think Katie should mention how chip is designed to mimic natural neuronal activity. Mentioning this would help the reader understand how this chip works in more depth than she originally had in her review.
Overall, I found this article to be very interesting. I was shocked that science has advanced so far that this could be done. The brain is such a complex thing, so learning that scientists are able to create a robot that mimics the natural brain, and can help save lives leaves me in amazement. I think Katie chose a very interesting article, and overall, she was able to produce a wonderful review.
I enjoyed reading Katie’s review on this article. She talked about exactly what was going on and said it in a way that was particularly easy to follow and fully understand. She then goes on to discuss the process and the purpose of these experiments. It was very interesting to learn how the scientist actually accomplished this very weird experiment.
ReplyDeleteSome things that I would recommend to Katie are that she discusses everything about the process and the purpose but we didn’t hear much about the outcome. I don’t know if the article talked about the outcome but if it did then I think that it would be good to try and incorporate that into the review. I also would have liked to know if the chip had any other effects on the rodent.
We are always learning new things about are brains and this breakthrough can lead to great success or great failures. It could help us with some brain diseases like cancer and tumors but (not to sound like a conspiracy nut) this could cause us to over develop robot/human brains and create something that could destroy the world as we know it. But I really enjoyed reading this article otherwise.
Katie made this article interesting and fun. I liked a lot of aspects if I had to name three it would be when Katie stated in the article that the rats were able to move after the chip was in the head and it was able to send messages to and from the brain. Another cool aspect Jamie made clear was when she said that this new technique will prolong and preserve many lives. When she said this can save many cancer patients and help people who have lost parts of there brains in accidents, well then I thought that was very interesting. One thing that I was looking forward to while reading this article was what led to the discovery; only after reading this article I realized Jamie noticed the same thing. Another thing Jamie could have done is tried to find out if the chip hurt the mouse or had any side affects on it. I really enjoyed how she picked this article, because this article was interesting for me. Maybe one day people can use the technology to control the mice and make them do certain movements. Maybe one day we can use that sort of technology to help and improve the future. One thing that I didn’t know before I read this article was that scientist are able to be so precise and attach a tiny chip to a mouse brain, I thought that was pretty cool.
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