 |
Implanted Memories Provide Songs To Birds
Ordinarily, it takes a lot of repetition from a father finch to give the baby finch enough to start practicing on their own. They learn to replicate the behavior after practicing tens of thousands of times.
There is a quicker way.
By controlling the interaction between two regions of the brain, Dr. Roberts’ team encoded memories in zebra finches that had no tutoring experience from their fathers. The birds used these memories to learn syllables of their song, with the duration of each note corresponding to the amount of time the light kept the neurons active. The shorter the light exposure, the shorter the note.“We’re not teaching the bird everything it needs to know – just the duration of syllables in its song,” Dr. Roberts said. “The two brain regions we tested in this study represent just one piece of the puzzle.”
His team found some of those answers by testing connections between sensory motor areas of the brain. Specifically, researchers used optogenetics to manipulate neuron activity in the NIf brain region and to control the information it sends to the HVC, another brain area implicated in learning from auditory experience.
In his lyrical short story The Preserving Machine, Philip K. Dick describes a machine that can preserve music in the form of animals. He writes that the Mozart G-Minor Quintet came out as a bird "slow and slender with the flowing plumage of a peacock."
Phil DIck fans also know that he described the idea of implanted or "extra-factual memories in his wonderful 1966 story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.
Via UT Southwestern.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/1/2019)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Culture ")
FlyZoo Robot Hotel By Alibaba
'... hotels that specialized in non-human service.'- Harry Harrison, 1970.
Implanted Memories Provide Songs To Birds
Finches can't tell the difference.
Google Commits To Fighting Deepfakes
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.' - Bruce Sterling, 1995.
Mindar The Robot Buddhist Priest Offers A Blessing
'Not working is the hardest work of all.' - Philip K. Dick, 1969.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Current News
Hail SmartCan! Your Trash Bin Takes Itself Out
'...a waste can twenty feet away stirred into life.'
Finally! Microsoft Surface Neo And Surface Duo Implement Excellent Courier Idea
'Runcible, whose pages were thicker and more densely packed with computational machinery...'
Tap Strap 2 Now With Air Mouse
'He waved his hand and the circuit switched abruptly.'
Legal Profession Now Fairly Bristling With AI
'The virtual counsel appeared to be about forty-five years old and prosperous.'
Entire Planet Modeled In New MS Flight Sim
'CIC uses [it] to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns...'
FlyZoo Robot Hotel By Alibaba
'... hotels that specialized in non-human service.'
Implanted Memories Provide Songs To Birds
Finches can't tell the difference.
Robot Tuna Swims As Fast As Nature's Tuna
'With one fluid motion, it surged forward, plunged, and was gone.'
Shapeshifter Robot Is Comprised Of Cobots
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed. For an interval, the device struggled with itself...'
Google Commits To Fighting Deepfakes
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.'
China Accused Of Harvesting Organs From Unwanted Groups
'The death penalty was his immortality, and he would vote the death penalty for any crime at all.'
Osmiridium Sounds Like Science Fiction (But It's Not!)
I can't resist science-fictional elements. Especially when they're real.
When Will We See The First Space Hotel?
'The heart of it was a vast hexagonal structure of welded metal, ten miles across...'
SpaceX Starhopper Has Flash Gordon Style
SpaceX makes retro cool spacecraft.
Mindar The Robot Buddhist Priest Offers A Blessing
'Not working is the hardest work of all.'
Does Your Company Need A 'Chief Dreamer'?
As far as the future is concerned 'they're the only experts we have'.
