{"id":48,"date":"2006-04-23T13:06:12","date_gmt":"2006-04-23T17:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2006-04-23T13:06:12","modified_gmt":"2006-04-23T17:06:12","slug":"a-better-vat-for-the-brain-in-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"A better vat for the brain in your life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientisttech.com\/article.ns?id=dn9038&amp;feedId=online-news_rss20\">astonishing story<\/a> from the <em>New Scientist:<\/em> an engineer at the University of Illinois has built a prototype retinal cell out of silicon. The idea is to replace damaged cells in human retinae with something that is a lot better than nothing. People have played around for years with the idea of implanted surrogate sensory organs which would transmit signals to the nerves behind.<\/p>\n\n<p>What&#8217;s enchanting about this one is that it doesn&#8217;t supply electrical signals directly. It is of course electrical but the way it works is that light deforms a piezo-electric crystal which is turn squeezes out a drop of neurotransmitter onto the nerve cells behind, and this <em>chemical<\/em> stimulation causes the other end to send an electrical impulse. So it turns out that all the science ficiton had things the wrong way round.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>All this puts me in mind of Dennett&#8217;s essay, referenced by <span class=\"caps\">HEB <\/span>some time back, about the man who is slowly turned into a cyborg: at what point does he stop being himself?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An astonishing story from the New Scientist: an engineer at the University of Illinois has built a prototype retinal cell out of silicon. The idea is to replace damaged cells in human retinae with something that is a lot better &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=48\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=48\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}