Is your knee-jerk reaction to cockroaches, "Kill them with fire!" or anything similar? You are not alone. But it's a given that some people won't share your roachy woes, and you can't find a better example than the group of high school kids in Cooper Union's summer internship program. The young interns experimented on 15 imported Central American roaches as part of their neuroscience research.
Copper Union physics professor, Robert Uglesich, says the students removed part of the cockroaches' antennae and replaced them with wires. The result? Robo roaches that can receive signals from a toy controller. Anyone else envisioning an army of robo bugs? But it doesn't end there — the roaches can also receive other stimuli such as music. And what else should cyborg cockroaches dance to other than Lady Gaga? The interns tested it out, and as expected, the Gaga tune translated into electric signals, making the roaches do a twitchy dance.
The point of all their experimentation is to design a way of communication with the brain that can be used to replace or restore lost brain function in humans. Think prosthetics that could alleviate health problems related to the human brain. And that's only one of the possible applications that could come out of the study. Outside of the scholarly scheme of things, the students seem to have developed genuine fondness for the roaches — they even named one of them Sir Walter Raleigh II.
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