There is a real rat brain, but it's not doing as much as the article would like you to believe... it's not like it's learning to drive or something, it's more being used as a storage mechanism for a set of basic instructions.
Here's my understanding (I am not a scientist) based on the other articles i've been reading about this experiment:
1. They extract a mass of brain cells from a rat foetus, they do this because the cells will not yet have many defined neuron pathways because the foetus hasn't had any serious sensory input.
2. They put the rat brain mass in some protein liquid and attach some electrodes or something to it to stimulate the brain.
3. They start stimulating the rat brain based on what the robots sensors are "seeing".
4. This stimulation causes the brain to start forming forming permanent neuron pathways based on the different sensory input sent to the brain mass.
5. Now they have a these pathways formed they can put more sensors on the brain that watch for these pathways to light up.
6. Now they can map specific neurons firing in the brain to actual functions of the the robot, making it move around.
Ultimately the brain isn't figuring out how to move the robot, the scientists are seeing what the result in the brain is when they input a specific stimulus. Then mapping that result to a function of the robot based on their observation.
From what I understand this is just the first phase of the experiment.. what they want to do next is take the brain with the formed pathways, mess them up so they don't fire properly anymore and see how the brain reacts. Does it form new pathways? Can the brain find an alternate way to get that same end response and still move the robot, but with new pathways?
The idea is to learn more about brain development and repair to better treat illnesses like Alzheimers etc.
If anyone knows better please correct me. I think this is awesome science and I hope to hear more about it as they continue with the study.
