Robot rodents could be a step closer after boffins created a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around just like a real one.

The ground-breaking computerised creature was created to help discover how the brain controls movement.

Brain boffins say the agility with which both humans and other species move is an “evolutionary marvel” that no robot has yet been able to closely emulate.

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But Professor Bence Olveczky, of Harvard University in the US, an expert in training real rats to learn complex behaviours in order to study their neural circuitry, says the “fantastic” creation of the virtual rodent is a new approach to studying how the brain controls movement.

Robot rodents
Robot rodents could be a step closer after boffins created a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around just like a real one

He led a group of researchers who teamed up with scientists at Google’s DeepMind AI lab to build a biomechanically realistic digital model of a rat.

Co-author Professor Matthew Botvinick, Google DeepMind Senior Director of Research, hailed working with the Harvard scientists as “a really exciting opportunity”.

Rat
The ground-breaking computerised creature was created to help discover how the brain controls movement

He said: “We’ve learned a huge amount from the challenge of building embodied agents: AI systems that not only have to think intelligently, but also have to translate that thinking into physical action in a complex environment.

“It seemed plausible that taking this same approach in a neuroscience context might be useful for providing insights in both behaviour and brain function.”

Using high-resolution information recorded from real rats, they trained an artificial neural network - the virtual rat’s “brain” - to control the virtual body in a physics simulator called MuJoco, where gravity and other forces are present.

Harvard University
Professor Bence Olveczky, of Harvard University in the US, says the "fantastic" creation of the virtual rodent is a new approach to studying how the brain controls movement

The team found that activations in the virtual control network accurately predicted neural activity measured from the brains of real rats producing the same behaviours.

The researchers say a next step might be to give the virtual animal autonomy to solve tasks akin to those encountered by real rats.

Prof Olveczky said: “We want to start using the virtual rats to test these ideas and help advance our understanding of how real brains generate complex behaviour.”

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