Making senses

摘要

Brains get data about the world through senses - sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. In a lab in North Carolina, a group of rats is getting an extra one. Thanks to brain implants, they have learned to sense and react to infrared light. This demonstrates the brain's ability to process unfamiliar data - an early step towards augmenting the human brain. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University School of Medicine is leading the experiment. His team implanted four clusters of electrodes in the rats' barrel cortex-thepartofthebrain that handles whisker sensation. Each cluster is connected to an infrared sensor that outputs an electrical signal. To train and test the rats' new sense, feeding stations with infrared lights were put at the corners of their cage. The rats got a reward for pressing a button when the station emitted an infrared signal.