A new study has confirmed that there are living robots. Robot neurons can now manufacture new neurons in the lab without human input, according to some preliminary results of research published in February in the journal Current Biology. That comes after a research group from Loma Linda University showed in October 2018 that a robotically generated brain went back to form a model of the human brain.
“Previous findings in neuroscience indicate that when neurons are removed from a brain, they could potentially drift downstream and eventually leak back in, which introduces numerous unwanted complexities,” says lead author David W. Gazzolo. “By integrating physiological analysis of neurons, we’re able to quickly and accurately predict neuronal migration rates, allowing us to decipher which neurons are migrating.”
Gazzolo says some uses of the technology could be in research areas such as therapies for brain injuries and could be applied to human patients for studies such as mapping for cancer.
“There’s a tremendous amount of potential for using this technique in the future,” says John W. Mitchell, professor of neuroscience at New York University, who was not involved in the study. “The key is finding a way to integrate multiple neuronal cells into a brain-like model in a way that is less invasive and accessible in terms of a patient.”
The feat was accomplished thanks to neural stimulators injected into the rats, which did not interfere with the animals’ own brains. Because the transplanted cells weren’t transferring to the rats’ brains, it allowed scientists to “map” and “use those cells to explore how the neurons propagate across the brain,” says co-author David R. Hughes. The paper’s lead author, Mitchell, led the study’s discovery on dopamine in the brain but did not contribute to the protocol for this work. He says his group is now figuring out which parts of the brain will need to be transplanted to the lab rats before other benefits can be found.
The researchers plan to conduct further research on the regeneration process and look into the efficiency of transplantation. “The question we’re asking now is how we’ll be able to integrate artificial organisms into a model system which is both small enough and robust enough to mimic a brain,” Mitchell says.