3.2 First Brainets

summary

Humans and animals need circuits of neurons, not individual neurons, to do computations and have multiple outputs.
- At any moment in time, the brain can pull from the billions of neurons, a subset than can produce a particular behavio.
- If some neurons die, there are new combinations of neurons that can produce behaviors.
Professor Nicolelis created a mouse-to-mouse brainet.
- To test how multiple areas of the brain come together to synchronize and to generate a common function, Nicolelis created brain-to-brain interactions.
- Tests were conducted by linking brains in rats.
- Nicolelis recorded the brain activity of a rat making a decision (encoder) and sent the electrical activity to a second rat (decoder).
- The decoder mouse had to choose between left and right to get a reward, but only the encoder mouse knew which side was correct.
- The rats were able to succeed 70% of the tim.
Brainet experiments with three monkeys showed they were able to collaborate in a video game together successfully 70% of the time.