It's Alive (ish) - Animats

Wired News: It's Alive (ish). The whole concept of these living neural network "animats" freaks me out a bit. I know it's just a small nervous system rather than a real brain, but still - the results point to some kind of awareness - bizarre and eerie indeed. They next hope to try and make the animats learn, and network multiple animates... when do you stop - if at all? I'm all for furthering our understanding of the brain, but this casual "let's see what happens" attitude bothers me.

Researchers have found that lab-grown neuron cultures tend to fire in bizarrely synchronized, dishwide waves, eerily echoing the neural patterns seen during Alzheimer's disease.

"It's possible that this is a state of arrested development," Potter said, "or that the networks are asleep because they're missing the parts (humans) use to wake up. It's (also) possible that the networks are in some sort of epileptic state."