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Chicago researchers at Northwestern University have fused the brain stem of an eel to a robot the size of a dollar coin, creating a crude cyborg, or cybernetic organism.

Kept alive in a saline solution, the brain adapts to changing light conditions and directs the robotic wheels to move towards light beams like a bull chasing a matador's swishing cape.

In February last year, a partially paralysed 43-year-old man in Phoenix, Arizona, began to walk again – with the help of electrodes implanted permanently in his spinal cord. He still needs a wheelchair, but can walk as far as 300m with the help of a walking stick.

The following month, British scientist Kevin Warwick had a centimetre-long electrode with 100 points as thin as a strand of hair implanted into a nerve in his forearm. This transmitted his nerve activity wirelessly to a computer.

As he moved individual fingers, that nerve activity was recorded, and the signals re-transmitted to operate robot arms successfully, even across the Atlantic.

Source: TheStraitsTimes