Sorry for double-posting, but this is quite... interestingly horrifying:
Killer Mice Show Where Hunting Instinct Starts in the BrainResearchers have transformed normally timid lab mice into snapping, super-efficient killers by manipulating circuits in the brain's "fear center" — the amygdala.
Their findings show just where the predatory mechanism comes from in the brain, and show that, in mice, anyway, it links the muscles of the jaw, shoulder and forelimb. They work together to create a fast and efficient pounce.
It creates a somewhat horrifying scenario but sheds light on precisely where in the brain hunting skills are centered. It's a mechanism common to all higher animals, including humans.
The team used a technique called optogenetics to control the mice. It involves genetically modifying specific brain cells using a virus, and then employing a laser to activate the neurons.
Once they'd homed in on the correct circuit, the transformation was instant, the team reports in the journal Cell.
"We'd turn the laser on and they'd jump on an object, hold it with their paws and intensively bite it as if they were trying to capture and kill it," said Ivan de Araujo, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, who also works at the nearby John B. Pierce Laboratory.
Here's a movie of how exactly that thing works.tl;dr: Scientists have created a virus that genetically modifies mice's brain cells, and those cells then can be activated with a laser, turning normal docile mice into killer mice instantly. A remote control wire, so to say.
Thankfully the laser fibers still need to be implanted directly into the mice's brains in order for this to work - you can't just mass infect people and then control them with a laser pointer... still, this shows that there is real fucking potential for making genetically modified remotely controlled soldiers without free will out of normal human beings.
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Topic: SCIENCE, Gravitational waves, and the whole LIGO OST! (Read 516566 times)