Cempaka Humanity: Harvard Scientists Control and Steer Live Worms Using Laser Light

President Barack Obama "It was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead -- being my brother's and sister's keeper, treating others as they would treat me," he said.

"And I think also understanding that, you know, that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings -- that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we ... achieve salvation through the grace of God." - (Sep 28, 2010.)

"Barack Obama (Indigo leader) is a major part of the Golden Age master plan"

2010 with Shaman, Kiesha Crowther in workshop in Zurich, Switzerland of early November 2010.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Harvard Scientists Control and Steer Live Worms Using Laser Light

POPSCI, By Clay Dillow, 01.19.201

CoLBeRT - CoLBeRT/Samuel Lab/Harvard's Center for Brain Science

Researchers at Harvard have figured out how to manipulate the actions of nematode worms sans wires or electrodes, opening the door to a better understanding of how just a few neurons can influence behavior in animals. Scientists at the university’s Center for Brain Science have successfully taken over the nervous systems of the tiny nematode C. elegans using nothing but laser light.

The system, known as CoLBeRT for Controlling Locomotion and Behavior in Real-Time (and named for comedian Stephen Colbert, who manipulates audiences with the glow of their TV monitors) takes advantage of nematodes that express a gene for particular light-sensitive ion channel proteins that are similar to proteins found in the human eye. The system then requires the nematodes to be genetically modified to respond to certain commands, a process that’s relatively simple as C. elegans has only 302 neurons.

RELATED ARTICLES

Each of these genetically modified neurons is associated with a certain behavior, like moving forward or backward or even reproducing. The light-sensitive proteins make those neurons sensitive to different colors of light, allowing CoLBeRT to stimulate or inhibit those neurons with lasers exhibiting different wavelengths.

While manipulating tiny worms may not seem like such a huge deal, the researchers are more or less showing a means of wirelessly taking control of another animals nervous system, granting them control over its behavior (yes, just like in The Naked Gun). Repeating the results in an organism with a nervous system as complex as a human’s would be a far greater trick—humans have 100 billion neurons to the nematodes’ 302—but the research could teach scientist a lot about where behaviors originate in the brain and how neurocircuitry works.

See it happen in the video below, wherein researchers induce egg-laying using a beam of blue light. The light reaches the proper neurons and stimulates the action at frame 8828, or about 43 seconds in.