SCI Frankenstein cyborg CRABS? Artificial intelligence researchers are putting Neanderthal brains into ROBOTS

[Melodi]

OK gang this is the Mirror which is another UK Tabloid and a step down from the National Enquirer so this story may turn out to be either badly reported or total horse product, but I thought it was interesting anyway; if anyone else can find anything on this please post - if it is a hoax I will change the title and if real, this needs serious looking into - again more stuff for my novel but I hate to think of it as being reality.

Also if this really is a real study, I don't for a moment think the only application is some weird idea of using robots to see how Neanderthals "think" but it might very well be a way to get a sort-of AI that uses some human brain cells...I think there is more to this story - if it isn't a hoax.



Frankenstein cyborg CRABS? Artificial intelligence researchers are putting Neanderthal brains into ROBOTS
A US scientific study is trying to find out why Neanderthals went extinct

ByJeff ParsonsTech/Science Reporter
15:18, 28 JUN 2018
SCIENCE

Frankenstein is the timeless story of reanimating a dead body through the use of technology.

And now a team of researchers in the US seem to be walking in the footsteps of Mary Shelley's creation with a new experiement.


Teams at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are experimenting with lumps of tissue taken from fossil bones of our early ancestors

They've reportedly managed to grow tiny brains, about the size of a pea, in petri dishes inside labs.

They say the next step is to link these cavemen brains to robots using neural implants to try and create a kind of Neanderthal cyborg.

This, in turn, will allow them to find out what caused Neanderthals to go extinct - leaving homo sapiens to colonise the Earth.


Despite the fact the last Neanderthal walked the Earth over 40,000 years ago, modern scientists are still learning new things about them thanks to advances in technology.

It takes several months to grow the Neanderthal DNA–containing stem cells into these tiny brains called "organids". And, once finished, they come out in a strange "popcorn" shape compared to the spherical human organids.

The team are planning to wire them up to crab-like robots to see how the two compare with each other.

"Ultimately, we want to compare the Neanderthalised organoid [with the robot] to test its ability to learn," said Alysson Muotri, a member of the research team at UCSD.

"By doing this systematically, we will learn what are the genetic alterations that made us uniquely human and why they were positively selected."

Gradually, it is believed that the Frankenstein crab robots will be able to learn their surroundings through the mini-brains that are controlling them.

Seeing how they learn differently will give clues about the differences.

"Neanderthals are fascinating because they shared Earth with us and there is now genetic evidence we actually bred with them," said Muotri.

A separate study in Japan has previously concluded that while early homo sapiens did not have larger brains than Neanderthals, they had very different brain structures - including a larger cerebellum.


Using data from 1,095 (human) participants, researchers from Keio University examined the relationship between the size of the cerebellum and abilities such as language comprehension and production, and working memory.

Their findings suggest that the early Homo sapiens’ brain structure meant they had better cognitive and social abilities than Neanderthals.

This may have improved early humans’ ability to adapt to changing environments, increasing their chances of survival compared with the Neanderthals.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/frankenstein-cyborg-crabs-artificial-intelligence-12812604

 

[NoMoreLibs]

Why do they do crap like this? Simply for grant money?

 

[parable]

I always thought of the early Terminator films as prophesy. Man, hell-bent in his desire to be like God, though not believing there is a God, creates an entity with the potential to destroy him.

 

[bw]

They've reportedly managed to grow tiny brains, about the size of a pea, in petri dishes inside labs.

Pegged my BS meter right there.

 

[Melodi]

Pegged my BS meter right there.

Yep and if you can find THE REAL story and/or that this one is complete rubbish for certain just let me know, that was one reason I posted - this is badly written "Tabloid Journalism" at its best only need the words "Horror" somewhere in the title to really be of the classic sort.

But I was hoping someone could ferret out if there is actually ANYTHING to this at all, or is it just "I had an Elvis Love Child from the Alien Sperm Bank UFO Horror" type of story.

 

[goosebeans]

I'm not used to posting articles so I hope this is ok.

Neanderthal "minibrains" grown in a dish


Alysson Muotri’s lab grew these brain organoids from human stem cells that had a developmental gene edited into the version once possessed by Neanderthals. J. COHEN/SCIENCE
Exclusive: Neanderthal ‘minibrains’ grown in dish
By Jon CohenJun. 20, 2018 , 12:35 PM

Until now, researchers wanting to understand the Neanderthal brain and how it differed from our own had to study a void. The best insights into the neurology of our mysterious, extinct relatives came from analyzing the shape and volume of the spaces inside their fossilized skulls.

But a recent marriage of three hot fields—ancient DNA, the genome editor CRISPR, and "organoids" built from stem cells—offers a provocative, if very preliminary, new option. At least two research teams are engineering stem cells to include Neanderthal genes and growing them into "minibrains" that reflect the influence of that ancient DNA.

None of this work has been published, but Alysson Muotri, a geneticist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, described his group's Neanderthal organoids for the first time this month at a UCSD conference called Imagination and Human Evolution. His team has coaxed stem cells endowed with Neanderthal DNA into pea-size masses that mimic the cortex, the outer layer of real brains. Compared with cortical minibrains made with typical human cells, the Neanderthal organoids have a different shape and differences in their neuronal networks, including some that may have influenced the species's ability to socialize. "We're trying to recreate Neanderthal minds," Muotri says.


http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/exclusive-neanderthal-minibrains-grown-dish

 

[Dozdoats]

Stuff like this really makes me miss Texas Arcane that much more.
======================================

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/scienc...rains-are-now-growing-petri-dishes-ncna886986

Science
Why tiny Neanderthal brains are now growing in petri dishes

Scientists hope the pea-sized blobs can help explain the rise of modern humans.
by Laura Geggel / Jun.27.2018 / 1:13 PM ET / Updated Jun.27.2018 / 1:59 PM ET

The pea-sized, Neanderthalized minibrains that carry the ancestral NOVA1 gene. Each "pea" has about 400,000 cells.Alysson Muotri

Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago, but thanks to cutting-edge science, there is now a lab in California that has petri dishes filled with pea-sized versions of the cavemen's brains.

Why are researchers cultivating and studying these minibrains? The reason, they say, is that these small neural lumps may reveal why Neanderthals died out and Homo sapiens went on to conquer much of the planet.

"Neanderthals are fascinating because they shared Earth with us, and there is now genetic evidence we actually bred with them," study leader Alysson Muotri, director of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Stem Cell Program, told Live Science.

Perhaps genetic differences between Neanderthal and human brains explain their demise and our success, Muotri said. In other words, it's possible that humans achieved great technological advancements because we have sophisticated neural networks, while Neanderthals didn't.

Muotri presented the research, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, at a UCSD conference called Imagination and Human Origins on June 1.

Building a brain
To investigate, Muotri and his colleagues compared the genome of Neanderthals (previously extracted from fossil bones and sequenced by other researchers) with that of modern humans. Out of 200 candidate genes that showed significant differences between the two species, the researchers decided to focus on just one: a master gene expression regulator known as NOVA1.

NOVA1 is highly expressed during neurodevelopment and has been linked to neural conditions, such as autism and schizophrenia, Muotri said. The NOVA1 gene is remarkably similar in humans and Neanderthals — just a single base pair (or pair of DNA "letters") is different between the two.

Scientists have already grown mini-Human organs, known as organoids, in the lab. To grow mini-Neanderthal brains (which the researchers playfully called Neanderoids), they used the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to "Neanderthalize" human pluripotent stem cells, or immature cells that can develop into any cell in the body, Muotri said.

Human mini brains and round, spherical organoids.Alysson Muotri

Then, using their in-house protocol, "we coaxed the stem cells to become a brain organoid," a process that takes between six and eight months, Muotri said. Now fully grown, the Neanderoids measure about 0.2 inches (0.5 centimeters) in size, "so you can actually see them with the naked eye once they are mature," he said.

The minibrains can't grow larger because they aren't vascularized, meaning they don't have a blood supply. Rather, the minibrain cells (there are up to 400,000 per brain) receive nutrients by diffusion.

"It is possible that in the future we could grow a bigger organoid," Muotri said. "We are working on this by creating bio-printed artificial blood vessels inside them."

Stark differences
Human lab-grown brains are generally round, but the Neanderoids were not. Instead, the Neanderthal minibrains had elongated tubular structures that gave them a popcorn-like shape, Muotri said.

Some of the Neanderoid cells also migrated faster from the source during development, which could explain the unusual popcorn formation, he noted. [3D

Moreover, Muotri added that the Neanderoids didn't have as many synaptic connections, or connections between neurons, and had altered neuronal networks. These features look similar to human minibrains grown from people with autism, he said. However, it's hard to say what this similarity means, if anything, he said.

"A correlation does not mean they are similar," Muotri said. "We can only speculate about this at this stage."

However, the research is still in the early stages, and it's important to note that the project has a few limitations, said Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved in the research.

"Organoids are far from being able to tell us how adult brains function," Pääbo told Science magazine. He and his colleagues are also working on making mini-Neanderthal brains, and the method can sometimes introduce unintended mutations, Pääbo said.

Even so, with controlled experiments "I'm quite hopeful we'll overcome those doubts," Pääbo told Science Magazine, adding that he hopes to compare Neanderoids with minibrains created from chimpanzee or human cells.

What's next
Muotri's team is now tackling another sci-fi-like challenge. They have devised a way for robots to measure electrical brain signals sent by human minibrains. By connecting the robots with the minibrains, they hope to create a "learning feedback loop" that will help the brain direct the robot to explore its surroundings.

"Ultimately, we want to compare the Neanderthalized organoid [with the robot] to test its ability to learn," Muotri said.

In all, the organoid research may reveal which genetic variants are pivotal to human success. "By doing this systematically, we will learn what are the genetic alterations that made us uniquely human and why they were positively selected," Muotri said.

 

[flying screwdriver]

Search Neanderthal brain tissue, there's more.
My crooked fingers and this smartphone is not cut / paste friendly.

EDIT: faster fingers already got the brains covered.
I'll go back to sleep.