The concept has been around for over a decade: Robotic cockroaches toting Bluetooth-powered backpacks that can make them move where you need them to move. As creators of our own cyborg roach, we’ve also had a say in it. Which makes us all the happier to observe that the idea has caught on and is getting new shape!
Earlier this year, a group of scientists led by Hirotaka Sato from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University managed to fit a cockroach backpack with an infrared camera and a little processor. The reason? These devices can turn the bug into an efficient detector of living things. The mission? A roach so decked out can squiggle its way through rubble in disaster zones and discover survivors where dogs or even your average-sized robot would be likely to fail. Assemble a contingent of hundreds or even thousands of these swift and agile robotic roaches, and you could make an enormous difference in areas that would otherwise have been impossible to reach.
To be sure, much improvement and tweaking is still needed before squads of rescue bugs embark on their first heroic mission. The engineering journey has been arduous too. At first, Sato and his team were only able to remotely direct the cockroach left and right, just like we do with our RoboRoach. But then they developed a navigation algorithm that rendered the roach’s movement autonomous, as published in May this year in Advanced Intelligent Systems. With more testing and honing ahead, the whole rig will get dependable enough in 3-5 years from now, the team expect.
Another thing that they did better is coming up with a less invasive way to connect with the nervous system of the bug without operating on it. Instead of the wires that they (and we) used to implant into the antennae, they designed wearable sleeves that you can just slide onto the antennae and attach them with hydrogel. In other improvements, the rescue bug carries an acceleration electrode on its belly. This makes it possible to control its speed too, whereas our RoboRoach backpack could only steer its wearer left or right.
We joined in the by launching our pilot of the RoboRoach the following year already. It’s a lo-fi yet powerful tool aligned with our mission to make neuroscience available to everyone. A whole host of other scientists have also been on it since, with more or less success.
Even though we primarily designed our RoboRoach for the college classroom, it’s always been open-ended like all of our kits. The backpack that we built isn’t just a receiver. Through the roach’s antennae, it sends a small pulse akin to the sensation the roach gets when it detects potential danger. This pulse triggers the flight response, making the roach instantaneously change its direction in order to flee. In effect, the technology taps into the insect’s natural escape mechanism that helps it stay safe in the big world of predators, from lizards to roach-averse humans. But it also hopes to employ this instinct by packing electrodes into the tiny yet sturdy body that can easily slip through cracks and tunnels to transmit loads of data back onto the surface.
Second week of March is always a special time of year for brain buffs. That is when educators from around the world join in for neuroscience outreach in schools and local communities!
Money’s always scarce, but your organization doesn’t have to tap into its own funds. If you write up and submit a proposal within the next couple of weeks (through October 31), you may get up to $1,250 to fund your Brain Awareness Week (BAW) activities for next March. This year, the IBRO/Dana Foundation Grants Program was expanded by 60%, so your chances of winning are bigger than ever!
But where to begin? You don’t need to break your head over activity ideas. We have a lot of wildly popular, effective and customizable hands-on experiments that have already made many an appearance during previous BAWs. Or, if you prefer something new, you can always scour our blog for inspiration from our fellows and interns! All of our experiments were designed to be conducted in makeshift labs, classrooms or public spaces. Being attractive and appealing whether you’re reaching out to middle-schoolers, college students or the general public, they all stand for democratization of neuroscience.
But what if you can’t make the second week of March? No worries. You’re not in any way required to stick with the exact BAW dates (March 11-17, 2024), nor will it affect your chances of getting awarded. Do it whenever you want, as long as you use the official Brain Awareness Week branding.
5 Brain Awareness Week BYB Classics
The foremost reason why these experiments strike a chord with so many people is that they break down very complex and sophisticated concepts in a way that looks and feels lo-fi enough not to intimidate anyone. Being featured on TED doesn’t do them a disservice either!
Another reason why we chose them is that they don’t take a lot of time or equipment.
What does it take to achieve control over another person’s arm so that it moves because you wanted it to move? In its essence, this is an experiment in advanced neuroprosthetics that’s cooked up for audiences as young as 5th grade!
— Illustrated by Cristina Mezuk — — Written by Jelena Ciric —
“How bad does it hurt?” It’s not for nothing that doctors usually struggle to ascertain our level of pain. It depends not only on how bad we report it to be, but also on the amount of pain we think we feel.
But are there reasons behind it that would begin to decipher our (in)ability to cope with or even verbalize the dreaded sensation? According to a recent collaborative study led by Dr. Elia Valentini from the University of Essex, there’s more to this phenomenon than a mere lack of tools that would accurately quantify exactly how much pain there is in an “ouch.”
What Does Our Brain Do While We Hurt?
So far, science held a more or less persisting view that a surefire way to quantify our levels of pain – much like any other physical sensation or state – was to measure our brain’s electrical activity. When you’re sitting and idly scrolling on your phone, your brain waves will likely hover around 12 Hz. Start dozing off and these alpha waves will slide back in intensity to theta (4-8 Hz) or even delta (1-4 Hz) if you were to fall asleep.
But if a very angry tweet kicks you out of your zen, your brain waves are likely to surge into the beta sphere, anywhere from 22 to 38 Hz. Finally, if you hop into the kitchen and stub your toe on the way, your brain activity will shoot through the roof and exhibit a very high level of oscillations, up to 80 Hz.
Or so the theory went!
The study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology paints a more nuanced picture. Different brains, it suggests, show remarkably varied responses to the same type and amount of pain. This leads the researchers to believe that each of us have our own and unique “pain fingerprint.” To gauge what our brain does against what it says it does, the researchers took two groups of willing subjects and put them through two datasets. The first group of willing participants was zapped with a laser and touched within a 2-week span, whereas the other only only got the laser stimulus. All the while, the participants’ response was measured on two fronts. Their EEG was recorded with a focus on the rapid gamma brain waves. Three seconds after the stimulus was applied, the participants were asked to verbally rate their feeling of pain from no pain (0) to maximum pain they were willing to tolerate (10).
The most intriguing finding? We may experience and describe a stimulus as painful in a certain way and to a certain extent, but the gamma waves will not necessarily play along. In other words, the waves that have been associated with pain for so long will actually vary significantly between individuals. But where they do show in an individual, they will be remarkably stable, consistent and reproducible.
