Slaves to Neurons: Are we different from Machines? - Softcover

Raju, Dr. Kaliannan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1477287124 ISBN 13: 9781477287125

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2012

Synopsis

Pete McRae, a robotics software programmer with a background in genetic engineering and neuroscience believes machines, in the very near future, will not only have the ability to think but will also have emotions. He is so obsessed with this belief that at times he cannot distinguish between biological life forms and machines. This strong belief and developments in the fields of robotics, neuroscience and nanotechnology lead him to develop a robot with an electronic brain that has the capabilities of a human brain. Could this mechanical brain think and feel like a human brain? The results of his experiment are not only shocking but they also bring back painful memories of his past. What does he learn about love and other emotions that go with it? Does he prove machines can have emotions and, dare we say, consciousness? What does his finding mean to the future of machines? Or for that matter, the future of biological life forms as we know them today?

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

SLAVES TO NEURONS

Are we different from Machines?By Kaliannan Raju

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Dr. Kaliannan Raju
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8712-5

Contents

Acknowledgements................................................................ixPreface.........................................................................xiChapter 1 Mice..................................................................1Chapter 2 Machines..............................................................31Chapter 3 Humans................................................................83Chapter 4 The Plan By Humans....................................................121Chapter 5 The Execution Of The Plan By Humans And A Machine.....................173Chapter 6 Machine With A Human Brain............................................231Chapter 7 A Very Human Machine..................................................295Chapter 8 Machines Of The Future................................................351Bibliography....................................................................369About the Author................................................................373

Chapter One

MICE

This was the part that Pete hated the most about his work: killing those mice after the completion of an experiment. Just entering the animal colony in the basement floor of the Neuroscience Research Institute was very unpleasant to him; the odor generated by the combination of the mouse food and the waste excreted by the mice was everywhere on the floor despite the excellent ventilation system that was always running. He entered a long narrow room about thirty feet in length and less than ten feet in width. The mouse cages—there were hundreds of them—were kept on shelves that ran along the entire length of the wall on both sides of the room. Pete pulled a cage that housed about a dozen mice that were no longer needed and carried it across the hallway to a smaller room where the carbon monoxide gas cylinders were kept. As he opened the door, he saw Alex Hamilton, another post doctoral research fellow in the Research Institute coming down the hall way.

"Going to gas those suckers?" Alex said in a derisive tone that Pete was only too familiar with.

"Yeah, will save their bodies for your Sunday barbeque.". Pete yelled back at Alex as he entered the room where the cabon monoxide gas cylinders were kept. As the door closed behind him he heard Alex say "You're wasting gas."

He put the cage with mice on a small counter next to a white plastic box that was connected to a gas cylinder. He stared at the mice wondering if they knew they only had few more minutes to live. Some mice looked at him directly for a few seconds; "Are they pleading for their lives?", he wondered. Few others were running along the walls of the cage oblivious to what was going on; the movement of the cage seemed to have excited them. One mouse was quietly eating the food that was in a small container in a corner of the cage, his last meal for sure.

Pete adjusted his thick eye glasses and pulled couple of latex gloves from the box on the counter and put them on. He never felt comfortable touching the mice even with gloved hands. His fellow researchers were so used to handling the mice they would not even bother using the gas to kill them. They would kill them by cervical dislocation—holding their head and tail and pulling them apart in a swift and sudden move. They said it was painless killing and the scientific community accepted this technique as an ethical way to kill small animals such as mice, but Pete never believed it. "It had to hurt for at least a few seconds." he thought. He relied on using the gas even if he had to kill just one mouse. He was perfectly at ease with cutting meat in the kitchen or carving turkey but handling those small rodents made him feel squeamish and cervical dislocation was just unthinkable. His colleagues made fun of him and called him a chicken but that never bothered him and he even made a conscious decision not to learn the technique.

With gloved hands, he opened the lid of the cage; the mice were all getting excited now and started making noise, like whistling with their lips. Pete scooped a few mice with both his hands and put them in the white plastic box. He slowly transferred rest of the mice to the plastic box and closed it. He then grabbed the metal knob on the cylinder and turned it counterclockwise to slowly release the gas into the plastic box and walked away to the other end of the room with his hands inside the deep pockets of his lab coat. He did not want to see the mice go to sleep although they never showed any sign of suffering. He always did this part very, very carefully and slowly. The right amount of gas had to be released, so the mice would just go to sleep within a few minutes. This, he thought was certainly painless. Once all of them were asleep, he would open the gas inlet a little more and wait for another few minutes before all the mice died.

He shut the gas off, opened the box and poked at the dead mice with his fingers to make sure they were not breathing. If any of them were still alive, he would have to start this process all over again and he hated doing that. He dumped the dead mice into a plastic bag, closed it and tossed it into a bin in the corner of the room. The cleaning staff would later sterilize and dispose off the dead mice.

Pete went back to the room with mice cages and saw Jane Harvey, a newly hired lab technician standing next to a table. There was a mouse cage on top of the table and there were couple of mice moving slowly on a diaper sheet next to the cage. There were also some dead mice on the same sheet. She picked one of the two mice, laid it on its belly on the diaper sheet holding it by the back of the neck in one hand and by the tail with her other hand as she looked up to greet Pete.

"Hello Dr. McRae" Jane said with a smile and at the same time without even looking down, she pulled the tail and the head of the mouse in opposite direction in a quick move and then put aside the almost dead rodent which jerked its body once before becoming still.

"Haven't I told you to call me just Pete?" He responded to her greeting while making a deliberate effort not to look at what she was doing with the mice as he walked to a cage that carried an identification tag with his name.

He stared at the mice inside that cage and thought about all the hard work, the long hours, the weekends and the sacrifice he and his wife Pam had to make since the time he started this project as a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Institute. It took him more than two years to create those genetically engineered mice and all he needed was just one mouse with a mutation at the exact location in the genome targeted by his experiment. His train of thoughts was interrupted by Jane.

"Pete, I am new here and I do not understand this 'gene knockout' technology. I heard you are very close to completing a gene knockout experiment. Can you explain this in simple terms that I can understand?" She was almost pleading with him in a soft and somewhat nervous tone.

Pete had been asked several times, mostly by his friends, to explain the new technology that had received lot of media coverage. Jane had started her new job just after completing her undergraduate program in a small town university and was obviously very excited by the high tech environment at the Research Institute and wanted to know all about the new technology. Pete could see the enthusiasm in Jane's face and he was more than happy to explain the gene knockout technology that was less than two years old and only a dozen or so biological research laboratories in the world had the resources and expertise to successfully carry out all the necessary experiments to complete a gene knockout. This was a powerful technology to study the function of any gene and for obvious reasons, the pharmaceutical companies fell head over heels in love with this new tool in the hope of developing new drugs to cure diseases and of course, make lot of money along the way. Or more aptly, make lot of money and cure diseases along the way.

"Do you know our Research Institute is a pioneer in the development of this technology?" Jane nodded her head. Pete continued. "My work focuses on the function of a gene that seems to play a critical role in development of the brain. As you know, these studies can only be done with mice and not human beings. My goal is to remove this gene from the mouse genome and study the resulting changes in the behavior of the genetically altered mice. Are you with me so far?"

Jane said "Yes. Is the technology for this gene knockout very complicated?"

"Of course. The manipulation at the DNA level is very complex. But once the DNA part is completed, we do what is known as DNA recombination inside mouse stem cells. There are methods to select cells that have undergone this DNA recombination and as you know we can generate mice from these stem cells. I can't go over all the details now."

"Of course. I am sure success in this project means a lot to your career."

Pete laughed. "I hope you are right but, a successful gene knockout experiment does not necessarily mean a big boost to one's career. If the gene that is knocked out plays a crucial role in the development of the brain, prestigious journals like Nature would readily publish my findings and that will certainly help me. But, if I am one of the unlucky ones that happen to work on a gene that does not play any important or interesting role in a mammalian life or even worse, does not lead to any noticeable change when knocked out from the genome, leading journals would not touch my work with a ten foot pole. There is one more thing. If my competition beat me to the finish line, that could break my career or at the very least put it back by a few years. The world of Biological Research is unforgiving of failures, especially for young PhDs."

"Wow. You may do everything right but still there is no guarantee for success." Jane said in a sympathetic tone.

"You got that right."

"When will you know the result of your experiment?"

"I should know tomorrow."

He did not sleep well for a few days and he knew he would spend another sleepless night before knowing the result of this huge effort that took more than two years of his life. A career in research was like a roller coaster ride. One day he was on top of the world with hopes of a major breakthrough only to find out the next day it was just a pie in the sky. Pete always felt he had more setbacks than he deserved in his career.

"You must be very excited?" Jane said as Pete walked towards the door.

"Of course." Pete said as he opened the door and moved out of the room.

* * *

Having completed the unpleasant task of killing the experimental mice that were no longer needed, Pete headed back to his lab on the tenth floor. The hospital was also home to a major neurological treatment facility in the country and patients were in the lower level floors. Pete would often see patients on the elevator or in the lobby of the hospital where they played music for the patients and their loved ones visiting them. This provided a temporary reprieve from the agony and sadness that were such an integral part of their lives. Even after three years of working in the hospital Research Institute, the sight of the patients with a brain disorder, especially young children, always made him feel sad and helpless at the same time. The primary cause for many of the brain disorders was still unknown and he wondered if his own research work would lead to a cure for any of the disorders in those children.

Pete got out of the elevator and walked to his lab at the end of the hallway, a ritual he had been doing few times a day, seven days a week for three years except for a short vacation in the summer and a few days during Christmas season. He was looking forward to his vacation next week and hoped he and his wife Pam would have a much better time than the previous ones. His research position did not pay well and Pam was a full time student taking accounting courses to start a new career. Obviously, his vacations had to be inexpensive and usually involved trips to places within driving distance and staying in cheap motels; no European jaunt or Las Vegas shows. What really terrified him was to go on his annual vacation after a failed experiment. No matter how hard he tried, he just could not keep work out of his mind during vacations. The result he was going to get the next day would decide what kind of vacation he was going to have.

A Molecular biology lab to an outsider would look very unimpressive. There were rows of workbenches with shelving on top. The shelves were full of reagent bottles with labels that made sense only to the person who prepared them. At one corner of the lab was a small room about 15 by 15 ft. that served as an office for the students, technicians and postdoctoral research fellows in the lab. Dr. Ron Pearlman had three graduate students, two post docs and a technician and all of them had to use that one small room which did not look any better than the lab itself. There were papers, mostly reprints from research journals on everyone's desk; there was a small bench in one corner that served as a coffee station.

As Pete sat down to record whatever he did in the animal colony, the new summer student Henry Wu walked into the room and said, "Pete, there is a problem with the bacterial colonies I grew overnight on the Petri plates. Can you come and take a look". Pete said "OK, show them to me" and thought to himself, "growing bacteria on an agar medium is a simple thing to do; how can anything go wrong with that?" Summer students could be either a great help or a pain in the butt. If they were quick learners and good at what they did, they could save the senior researchers a lot of time by doing routine and mundane but necessary experiments. If they turned out to be slow and not motivated, a lot of time and energy could be spent in training them and by the time they were able to do things on their own, summer would be over. "I'd rather have a robot do these routine and boring experiments than a summer student." Pete thought to himself and suddenly the memories of his high school days came rushing to his mind. Pete had lot of interest in Robotics and participated in many competitions to design and develop robots to carry out various tasks. He received lot of help from an uncle who was a university professor in electrical engineering. But for his enthusiasm for studying the brain, he would probably have gone into the field of robotics.

Pete walked with Henry to a corner of the lab where the bacterial plates were on a work bench. He opened the lid and immediately realized what was wrong. The agar nutrient medium was not evenly distributed in the dish; in one part of the dish the medium was barely a millimeter thick and the bacterial colonies were very tiny while on the other side it was close to a centimeter in thickness and the colonies were much larger. This would happen if the agar medium was poured at a lower temperature than required and solidified quickly before it could spread evenly on the dish. Pete looked at the nervous student and said with a scowl "Listen. Let us say you are the God and are about to create new life forms on a planet. Will you not distribute the resources evenly in your experimental planet?"

Henry looked puzzled. "What do these bacterial colonies have anything to do with what this nerdy guy is asking" he thought.

He replied "Of course I would distribute the resources evenly, if ... I ... were God".

"Look, you are like God to these bacteria, the same way I am like God to those genetically engineered mice. You created a small bacterial planet on this Petri dish but did not evenly distribute the resources-nutrients in this case—and so you have both rich and poor regions on your planet very much like the world we live in".

Henry laughed. The idea of being a God amused him.

"Don't laugh, I am serious" Pete sneered at the poor summer student who thought it was not a huge mistake but nevertheless felt intimidated by the tall, lanky frame of Pete towering over him. "Do a better job as God next time" Pete said as he walked away.

Heather Smith, a student in her fourth year of graduate research program, was listening to all this from few feet away and started laughing. "Do you like being God, Henry?" she quipped.

"What is up with him?" Henry asked in a low voice once Pete was at a safe distance away.

Heather said, "Just ignore him; tomorrow is a big day for him and he is already a nervous wreck."

On days like this, Pete thought he was crazy to pursue a career in Science; "how much of this roller-coaster ride can I take," he thought. The poster above Henry's desk aptly described his situation—"You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps"-. He had been through so many ups and downs since he started his Graduate research more than ten years ago, that he often wondered if his passion for science was strong enough to keep him in research for the rest of his working life. After his first postdoctoral stint, he worked as research scientist for a pharmaceutical company in their R & D division for two years and then lost his job when the company downsized. Since the job market was not getting any better, he had to go back to academia where the only type of research position he could find was as a postdoctoral fellow. The personal cost of a career in science was huge. Many of the faculty members were either single or divorced. The competition to get a research grant was very tough and only the best could survive. The stories of young scientists leaving bioresearch and moving to other fields, especially computer science—an area that was becoming hot and which many felt would stay that way for the rest of the nineties and well into the new millennium—were becoming more and more common. If his current gene knockout project failed to give the push in his career that he so badly needed, would he stay in science? Pete was asking himself that question almost everyday. The financial sacrifice aside, it also could take a heavy toll on his marriage although Pete had not seen any sign of that in his life yet. Pam had been very understanding and never complained about the long hours and the not so great pay.

Dr. Ron Pearlman, a short bearded man in his forties, walked into the lab and said to no one in particular, "Hi everyone, there is a seminar on a very interesting topic in virology this afternoon; if you have the time, I strongly suggest you attend". Pete thought the seminar would be a nice distraction to keep his mind away from all the thoughts about the next day that kept him on the edge. Dr. Pearlman then walked to Pete and said, "Here is a new DNA sequence analysis software from this, um, oh, I do not remember the name of the company; the rep was here this morning looking for you. Can you evaluate and see if it is better than the one we currently use?" and handed an envelope that contained a floppy disk. Pete was always interested in all the computer software for biological research that were coming out in the market and he was always the first one to be approached by all the software vendors who knew he would be the one to give thumbs up or down on their product. Many researchers in the hospital would go to him with questions about the software they were using in their work. He was also developing a software package to analyze protein sequence and predict possible three dimensional structures from the sequence data. He thought software development was lot easier than laboratory research in biology. He knew exactly what to expect from his computer program since he wrote every line of the code. The biological systems, as one could imagine, were unpredictable and so much effort and time had to be spent to reproduce results to make sure they were not just artifacts. If he ever lost his passion for biological science Pete knew in the back of his mind where he would find himself in: software development, which he thought would be very rewarding and certainly less demanding than brain research.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from SLAVES TO NEURONSby Kaliannan Raju Copyright © 2012 by Dr. Kaliannan Raju. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1477287124
• ISBN 13: 9781477287125
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 388