"Brainjacking" Software, Borrowed Grey Matter And Chip Implants Create A New Generation Of Animal Cyborgs

When we hear the word "cyborg," most of us probably imagine a part-human, part-machine character from movies like "Robocop", or the electronic-biological androids from "Blade Runner" or the "Terminator" films.

In the real world, researchers are pushing further ahead with creating cyborgs, using biological tissue from a variety of non-human creatures.

An editorial in the latest issue of the UK publication New Scientist notes that some of the new cyborgs run on brain tissue culled from living creatures. Others rely upon "brainjacking" software, which essentially borrows signals from an animal's nervous system.

One successful example of "brainjacking" cited by New Scientist is the work of Johns Hopkins University professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings who has used recordings of signals from the CPG, or central pattern generator (a type of neural network), found in the spines of lampreys, to stimulate "walking" motions in robotic legs. The RedBot, as the project is called, can use these CPG signals to replicate various natural gaits, including walking, running and climbing steps. Here's a 2009 YouTube video of the RedBot's legs at work.

Etienne-Cummings and colleagues also have used a silicon model of a cat's hind-limb neural circuitry to control the walking of a live, temporarily paralyzed cat.

One major player in animal-machine hybridization has been the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA has been working in recent years to develop cybernetic insects that are equipped with micro electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS (that is, really, really tiny devices) that could allow humans to be in command of the insects. A 2007 DARPA presentation predicted the eventual development of "an intelligent micro air vehicle maneuvering around wires, birds, even bullets, without human controls, perhaps being piloted by a hybrid-insect cyborg."

Since then, there have been considerable advances in insect-machine hybridization. In 2009, DARPA scientists presented a paper at an engineering conference that described the use of ultralow-power radios to control hawk moths' flight, as well as a system for powering those circuits by harvesting energy generated by the insects' flight.

An article in the engineering publication IEEE Spectrum detailed some of the devices that the DARPA researchers had developed. The direction of the moth's flight, for example, was manipulated using a radio-controlled chip that stimulated the nervous tissue in the moth's abdominal nerve cord.

In October, Atsushi Takashima of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and colleagues presented a paper describing a "brain-machine hybrid system", or BMHS, they have developed. The BMHS robot uses the microbrain of a silkworm moth. The moth's microbrain was able to direct the machine to track chemical pheromones that the male moths use to locate mates.

"We demonstrate the BMHS can behave like a silkworm moth," the scientists explain in their abstract.

But for those who judge progress by whether or not we can create a real-life army of imitation Terminators, we urge patience. Eventually, the technology developed to control and/or mimic animals' neural networks is likely to be used in humans. New Scientist foresees the eventual development of computer chips that emulate animal brain circuitry, which when implanted into humans with paralyzed legs, could enable them to walk.

In due time, the publication envisions that software-driven cyborgs may be "perhaps even able to merge several kinds of minds" to enhance their abilities.