Rat brain flies jet

Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to fly a fighter plane.

Scientists at the university of Florida taught the ‘brain’, which was grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a rat embryo, to pilot an F-22 jet simulator. It was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds.

“When we first hooked them up, the plane ‘crashed’ all the time,” Dr Thomas DeMarse, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, said. “But over time, the neural network slowly adapts as the brain learns to control the pitch and roll of the aircraft. After a while, it produces a nice straight and level trajectory.”

Science!