Brainoid

By the time Qi Min arrived at the laboratory, Ke Yue had already instantaneously connected the rat to the 256×256×256 micro-brainoid several times.

Indeed, as long as the time is short enough, the rats will not become comatose. However, the connected rat will be sluggish for thirty minutes to an hour, and then start running around in the cage erratically, as if it is almost crazy.

This is a very interesting phenomenon. And if we follow Qi Min's sudden explanation, what if the brain-like body absorbed something from the rat when establishing a connection - something like "vitality"? -- then it's possible that it stores this "vitality" and releases it to the rat again when the connection is broken. However, due to previous long-term connections with multiple rats, a large amount of "vitality" was absorbed and failed to be released. Therefore, the micro-brainoid body may have released too much "vitality" to the rats with instantaneous connections. causing it to have excess "vitality" and behave abnormally.

If this conjecture can be slightly approximated to the facts, then it can be guessed that the so-called "vitality" is essentially some kind of neural activity, which is transmitted to the brain-like body through the corpus callosum interface and stored as data, and then transmitted back to the rat through the corpus callosum interface. brain.

Qi Min originally wanted to build a virtual connective brain that could reflect the characteristics of the real brain. However, it now seems more like something that cannot demodulate brain signals, but may store part of the information from the brain. But no matter what, she believed that this thing definitely had research value.

But how to study it? After all, it still has not solved the problem of brain signal demodulation. Even if there is any information stored, it cannot be understood...

Qi Min thought about it and felt that even if they couldn't decipher the information stored in the brain-like body, they could at least design experiments to prove that it could store information from the brain. Even if she wanted to do something big, she had to admit that she was not a serious computer science major, and she was no good at analyzing data. It was impossible for her second-rate team to decipher the information stored in the brain-like body.

——

To design an experiment to prove that brain-like bodies can store information from the brain, Qi Min's first reaction was to discuss it with researcher Zhou Xiaoshan. When she had already written the message on WeChat, before clicking send, she thought that researcher Zhou Xiaoshan was not her mentor. She was now an independent laboratory PI, and she had to make her own decision on this matter.

However, Wang Xin and Chen Linyou didn't know much about animal experiments, so they probably couldn't be of much help. Qi Min still chose to find a quiet place to discuss with Ke Li.

She made an appointment at the cafe next to the pond on campus. It just so happens that the weather is getting cold now and there are no people in the cafe.

Sitting under the outdoor umbrella of the cafe, the two ignored the recommendation and ordered two cups of lemon black tea.

Qi Min first said that he would design an experiment to prove that the brain-like body can indeed store information in the rat brain. Ke Yue immediately said: "This is not difficult to do - connect rat A for a long time, and then connect rat B instantly. See Let’s see if it can obtain the information that originally belonged to Rat A’s brain.”

"The basic idea is this." Qi Min asked, "But how to measure whether B has obtained A's information? What is this information? This is very important. Do you have any guesses?"

"Well... at least part of it is memory?" Ke Yue guessed.

Qi Min took a sip of black tea and thought for a while before saying: "There are two hypotheses. The first one is that if information is written and output to the brain-like body according to the stack mode, then the first output should be the last written, maybe It is information from the hippocampus - such as working memory. The second one, if writing and output are circular, then output will be done first and then written, which should be... a visual image?"

"It's also possible that it's not linear at all." Ke Yue added, "That might not be measurable..."

"Anyway, let's design the detection method based on working memory and visual images." Qi Min said.

"Then the two can use the same experiment." Ke Yue said immediately, "The water maze should be fine."

His design was to mark four different patterns at equal distances on the walls of the water maze, one of which corresponds to the location of the underwater platform. Let rat A complete the water maze test first, so that its working memory stores the pattern information corresponding to the position of the underwater platform, and finally sees this pattern. Then it was immediately connected to the newly generated 256×256×256 micro-brainoid body to cause it to become comatose, and then the rat B was instantly connected to the micro-brainoid body to obtain the information of rat A’s brain, and then rat B was asked to do the same thing. Maze test. If working memory or visual image information can be transmitted from A to B through the brain-like body, then the average time for rats in group B to pass the water maze test will be significantly shortened.

In order to verify that the experimental design is correct, at least two control experiments are required. In the first blank control experiment, rat A was not permanently connected to the brain-like body, but rat B was directly connected to the newly generated empty brain-like body instantaneously, in order to rule out that the transient connection of the brain-like body itself was harmful to the rat. BEffects on water maze performance. The second conditional control experiment was to change the position of the underwater platform in the water maze test of rat B to verify that the information input through the brain-like body would indeed guide the rat to the position of the underwater platform in the first water maze test.

Such a design requires the preparation of at least three groups of newly generated 256×256×256 micro-brainoid bodies. And if there is more than one rat in each group, 3N micro-brainoids are needed. Fortunately, Qi Min's full-size brain-like body has been generated, and the computing resources of the "Nimbus" supercomputing center have been freed up. It is relatively easy to use it to create 256×256×256 "gadgets".

In the cafe, Qi Min and Ke Yue wrote out a detailed experimental design. After all, there were limitations on the experimental equipment. Qi Min set the number of rats in each group to 3 pairs (the blank control group only needed 3), and then returned to the laboratory to start preparing for the experiment.

Rats with previously installed callosal interfaces could no longer be used, so the interfaces had to be removed, cleaned and reinstalled. This matter can only be left to Ke Li, while Qi Min is responsible for generating nine new 256×256×256 micro-brainoid bodies, along with preparing all other experimental equipment.

Even if I work overtime and leave the laboratory from 9 am to 9 pm every day, this kind of preparation still takes a week.

Fortunately, they were finally ready. Qi Min and Ke Li came to the animal experiment platform with computers, data cables and 15 cages of rats, and installed the four marking patterns of the water maze.

First, let the rats in the experimental group A-1 do the first water maze test, and then use the prepared data cable interface set to connect it to the interface set above its head. Rat A-1 became predictably comatose. Then the connection with the A-1 rat was disconnected, and the brain-like body interface was instantaneously connected with the B-1 rat again. The B-1 rat successfully stayed awake.

So far so good.

Ke Quercus put the B-1 rat into the fixed position where the water maze test started. The moment his hand left, the camera above the water maze started recording, and the B-1 rat began to swim——

However, it did not swim directly towards the pattern representing the direction of the underwater platform.

On how a molecular bricklayer writes about animal experiments (face covering)

I have done experiments related to animals, that is, dissecting mice to extract cells from various organs...