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    APPENDIX TR2 - RATS CONTROL DEVICES WITH THOUGHT

    [Eleanor White comments:  This article shows clearly that the reading
    of minds is almost accomplished in the UNclassified world.  Since
    CLASSIFIED technology is always a decade or two ahead of the
    unclassified world, imagine what exists now in the black areas of
    defense contractors and government labs!]

    Rats Control Robot by Thought Alone

    By Maggie Fox
    Reuters

    WASHINGTON (June 23) - It sounds like something out of science
    fiction -- a rat with a small electrode sticking out of its head
    decides it wants a drink and, without touching anything at all,
    gets a robotic arm to bring it some water.

    Still, a team of neurobiologists say their rats can control a
    machine with brainpower alone, and they think their technology may
    someday help paralyzed people.

    ''The people in the lab started calling the experiment the
    'thinking about drinking experiment,' John Chapin of Hahnemann
    Medical College in Philadelphia, who led the research, said in a
    telephone interview. ''But we don't know whether rats think.''

    Whatever the rats are doing, they are controlling the robotic arm
    without touching anything, said Chapin, who worked with colleagues
    at Duke University in North Carolina.

    Reporting in the July issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience,
    they said they implanted tiny electrodes, no thicker than a hair,
    into the brains of six rats.

    ''It doesn't hurt the animal,'' Chapin said. ''All there is is a
    little plug coming out of the animal's head. He runs around the
    cage and everything.''

    The electrode is recording the activity of neurons -- on average 46
    -- which Chapin found was important to making the experiment work.
    Earlier studies that recorded the activity of just one or a few
    brain cells did not work.

    ''We trained the rat initially to put his paw on a lever and to
    press the lever down. When the lever got pressed down there was a
    robot arm that moved over to a water dropper and then brought the
    water back to the animal's mouth,'' Chapin said.

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