Brains on silicon.
If you haven't seen the YouTube video
of Prof. DeMarse's flight simulator being controlled by a rat brain
(the rat was long gone, but the cells were there, alive and kicking),
then you should: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jeV77dSyMI
. After that, when you have all the usual questions ("how do they do
that?") and the usual answers ("If a small subset of a rat brain can
fly, imagine what a rat brain can then do!"), look at our primary cell
cultures: they are from Helix aspersa, the land snail (escargot) some
people love to eat (yes, I said eat).
