If you want to change someone’s behavior, you can do two things.
You can go four layers deep into their dreams on a daring and deadly raid to plant an idea.
Or you can like… flip a switch I guess.
Hi independent thinkers, Julian here for DNews.
You are the master of your mind, right?
You make your own decisions and nobody and nothing can make you do anything you don’t
want to do.
Well I have bad news for you; that might not be true in the future.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts medical school have managed to alter the behavior
of nematodes by directly reprogramming one neuron.
The nematode C. elegans is a tiny roundworm that lives in soil.
It crawls about, moving its head from side to side to feel out its environment.
But it has a very clever enemy.
A carnivorous fungus that forms small loops like nooses.
When the C. elegans pokes its head through, the noose tightens, breaking the cuticle of
the worm and letting the fungus feast on the insides.
C. elegans has developed a counter to this deadly noose.
There’s a small delay before the noose tightens, and if they back away quickly while keeping
their head straight, they can escape.
For this reason, when the nematode is touched just behind the head, it will do exactly that.
It won’t back up this way if you touch it anywhere else, like on the tail or even the
nose.
With that in mind, Dr. Mark Alkema set out to see if he could quite literally reprogram
the worm’s behavior.
C. elegans is the only animal to date that’s had its entire brain mapped.
It’s only got 302 neurons making 7000 connections, so it was the ideal candidate for the first
connectome.
A connectome is the name for that fully mapped neural network.
Because everything is plotted out, the complete path of this defense against fungus is known,
from sensory neuron to interneuron to motor neuron.
So Dr. Alkema decided to see if changing how one of those neurons fired changed behavior.
His team swapped out a neuron’s inhibitory channel with an excitatory one.
Now when the engineered C. elegans felt something behind its head it no longer backed up, but
pressed on while contracting its head.
It would still fall victim to the noose though, rendering its survival mechanism moot.
Changing how one little neuron worked completely changed behavior, while still keeping the
rest of the worm’s brain stable and functioning.
This has implications far beyond keeping fungus fed.
The idea of a connectome has long been the subject of debate.
Detractors of it pointed to the nematodes and said, “Yeah that’s cool and all, but
can you actually do anything with it?”
Because of that, mapping neurons of much larger brains like ours, with our 86 billion neurons
and 100 trillion synapses, seemed like a fool’s errand.
It would be costly, time consuming, and ultimately useless.
Now however it’s been shown that knowing exactly how behavior flows through the brain
means we can direct that flow.
If we have a complete map of a human brain, think of the implications.
Maybe we can write out behavioral disorders like ADHD, or finally rewire that brain failure
that makes people play their music out loud on public transit.
What a wonderful world that would be.
But until that day comes, you’ll just have to change hearts and minds the old fashion
way: by getting your thoughts and story out there.
Which you could do on your very own` website.
And no domain extension will help you tell your story like a DOT COM or DOT NET domain
name.
And because you watch DNews, you can get 15% off Domain Dot Com’s names and web hosting
by using the code DNews when you check out.
Another challenge to making connectomes is the brain’s neuroplasticity.
The brain is a pretty amazing thing and it adapts and rewires itself.
Trace talks about how brains adapt in amazing ways here.
Connectomes of complex creatures like us would be tough to pull off, do you think it’d
be worth it to engineer behavior?
Is engineering behavior even ethical?
Let us know in the comments or on facebook or twitter, subscribe for more, and I’ll
see you next time on DNews.