The "living computer" was grown from 25,000 neurons extracted from a rat's brain and arranged over a grid of 60 electrodes in a Petri dish.
The brain cells then started to reconnect themselves, forming microscopic interconnections, said Thomas DeMarse, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida.
"Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network -- a brain."
When linked up to an F-22 jet flight simulator, the brain and the simulator established a two-way connection similar to how neurons receive and interpret signals from each other to control our bodies.
Gradually the brain learnt to control the flight of the plane based on the information it received about flight conditions.
However, the brain still falls a long way short of the complexity of the human brain, which has billions of neurons, and Steven Potter, a biomedical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said a brain in a dish flying a real plane was still a long way off.
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This is absolutely amazing! I saw a story on discovery the other day of a rat hooked up to a computer... they were pushing one button on the keyboard and the right leg would move, another and the other leg would move.. then they made the rat walk in a maze the direction they wanted etc. .. but this story is amazing!
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