Rescue Rat: Could wired rodents save the day?
By Susan Milius
A Brooklyn-based research team has wired a rat’s brain so that someone at a laptop computer can steer the animal through mazes and over rubble.
The research gives a glimpse of the possibilities for training animals by sending cues and rewards directly to their brains, says Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. In the May 2 Nature, he and his colleagues predict their accomplishment could inspire novel approaches to land mine detection or search-and-rescue missions.