University of Reading - Robot with a Biological Brain: new research provides insights into how the brain works

Yeah it's finally out!!!! (big yell and frown afterwards).
I was always keen on how brain functions and the power it endures with a special reference to my fascination with cyborgism (I get hooked to it when I was a student of Information Science and among them my fav subject was AI and Neural Networks). An excellent work by Prof. Kevin Warwick and by Dr. Ben Whalley which appeared on New Scientist issue 16/08/08. Now I can see where the world is heading with this biological brain that is being infused with the machine. Few phenomenal works that have been carried out are

a.) Cultured Neurons
b.) Biological brain developed from these cultured neurons and
c.) multi electrode array (MEA) which is a dish with approximately 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals generated by the cells, used to drive the movement of the
robot.

The research adopts to one primary principle of learning i.e. feedback learning and memory but in near future the development may lead to find out more ways to implement complex models of learning as well as memorization technique to be implemented in future biological robots.

Still this research is in it's primary phases but this can be very surely predicted that very soon we may see a complete robot with a humans brain. Well of course it's a cause of concern for we humans. One may ask, how?

Primarily due to few principle reasons, firstly that if the learning of these biological robots are not controlled they may become threat to human race, these robots might start replicating themselves and start eradicating human at mass or maybe humans will be produced in their labs for further replication of these biological robots. Another possibility that can't be ruled out is that they will eradicate even a single human and start producing only neurons in lab. No doubt that these research are meant to learn about the behavior of the brain i.e. how they process information, learning and forming memory in our brain but it is also meant at narrowing the gap between human and machine specially putting things in charge of the robots.

So still we have some time to watch and witness the new saga of cyborgism till then we can keep hopping on these speculation and a tab on the latest of research.