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'Cyborg' rat's computer brain offers hope for stroke victims


A "cyborg" rat may soon help scientists figure how to help stroke and brain injury victims regain some of their lost functions, after researchers at Tel Aviv University gave a rat an artificial brain part. The scientists got a positive response from the rat, whose own cerebellum was disabled before its brain was linked to the computerized cerebellum, Discovery News reported. "It will be a long time before such a system can be applied to humans, as there is still a lot of work to do in understanding the kinds of signals the cerebellum receives and how they are processed. On top of that the researchers still haven't tried the system on a conscious animal. But it offers a lot of promise for people who have suffered strokes or brain injuries," Discovery News said. Psychobiology professor Matti Mintz led a team that built a computerized version of the cerebellum, the structure at the back of a the brain that controls how messages get from the brain to the body and back again. Critically, the cerebellum controls the timing of movement, and injuries to it cause people to lose their balance or suffer motor control disorders, rather than paralysis. In the team's experiments, the artificial cerebellum is outside the rat's skull. With the computerized cerebellum, the scientists tried to condition the rat to blink at the sound of a tone - and it did once it heard the sound. But when the synthetic cerebellum was disconnected, the rat could not learn the response. "That means they got the artificial cerebellum to receive information from one part of the brain and send it back to another. This is a big advance from previous brain-computer interfaces, such as prosthetics, or computer controls, which send information only one-way," Discovery News said. — TJD, GMA News

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