This is your grid on brains

October 3, 2008 | Source: PhysOrg.com

Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology plan to use living neural networks composed of thousands of brain cells from laboratory rats to control simulated power grids in the lab.

From those studies, they hope to create a “biologically inspired” computer program to manage and control complex power grids in Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and elsewhere, and possibly other complex systems, such as traffic-control systems or global financial networks.

The Missouri S&T team will work with researchers at Georgia Tech’s Laboratory for Neuroengineering, where the living neural networks have been developed and are housed and studied. A high-bandwidth Internet2 connection will connect those brain cells over 600 miles to Venayagamoorthy’s Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. Missouri S&T researchers will transmit signals from that lab in Rolla, Mo., to the brain cells in the Atlanta lab, and will train those brain cells to recognize voltage signals and other information from Missouri S&T’s real-time simulator.