Microscopic Robots to Probe Brain Cells

You can read an interesting article about scientists who want to use microscopic robots to explore brain cells here. This seems like a really neat development that could have implications for both understanding the workings of the brain and manipulating its functioning as well.

"Donald and his team of Duke University computer scientists have constructed a fleet of fully steerable microrobots small enough to move around on the head of a pin. Robots this small could someday explore brain tissue or manipulate delicate electronics.

It sounds like they are going to use these microbots to probe animal brain cells. I'm not sure at this point if they are going to use them on live animals brains or not. You can read another article about these microrobots here

"Formally known as microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microrobots, the devices are of suitable scale for Lilliputian tasks such as moving around the interiors of laboratories-on-a-chip."

This seems like a first step towards having miniature nanobots that will be able to go inside the brain. The futurist Ray Kurzweil has been talking about the potential for technology like this for quite some time.

"Brain nanobots will be computerized and will be able to interact with our biological neurons. These nanobots are so small, that we could have literally billions of them inside the capillaries of our brains. These nanobots would be networked and capable of expanding human intelligence, as well as providing full immersion virtual reality.What happens when we have billions of nanobots inside the capillaries of our brains, non-invasively, widely distributed, expanding human intelligence, or providing full-immersion virtual reality? The future is going to be, as they say - interesting."

Kurzweil is a bit of an optimist and fairly controversial among many ordinary scientists. However he certainly has the ability to generate novel, plausible and interesting ideas.

It's currently unclear what these new microbots can do, but they may give scientists a better understanding of how the brain works. Eventually technology like this may enable scientists to have much better brain imaging and even allow stimulation of individual neurons inside the brain. This also brings up some potential dystopian future scenarios like the possiblity of mind control. Overall, though, it's a very interesting development.

The researchers on this project are Bruce Donald from Duke University, Richard Mooney and Gleb Finkelstein.

More information about this can be found at this website.