Consciousness In 'Westworld,' Heart Cells On Graphene, Bike Safety App. May 18, 2018, Part 1

Science Friday

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🗓️ 18 May 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

In HBO’s series Westworld, human-like robots populate a theme park where human guests can have violent, gory adventures in the Wild West without the repercussions. The robots are so lifelike that they fool the visitors and themselves. They bleed, die, grieve, and love—thinking themselves human. But as Westworld’s robots grow increasingly independent of their repetitive, programmed loops, the show incites viewers to question whether AI can truly be autonomous or conscious—and who in this story deserves empathy. Roboticist Robin Murphy and neuroscientist Steve Ramirez discuss the show’s science and social commentary. The jury is still out on whether graphene—the carbon-based substance people have called "wonder material"—will be part of every gadget in the future, but scientists are finding it to be an extremely powerful tool in the biomedical laboratory. In a study out this week in the journal Science Advances, scientists used graphene’s electrical properties to stimulate lab grown heart cells that could be used in patients after they’ve had a heart attack. Plus, a Pittsburgh cyclist designed a crowdsourcing navigation app to help other city bikers find the safest roads to travel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato, coming to you today from the studios of 90.5 W-E-S-A
0:06.9	in beautiful downtown Pittsburgh. Just how memories are formed, stored, retrieved in the brain,
0:12.7	you know, it is still a mystery. The prevailing theory is that changes in the connections
0:18.2	between neurons, our synapses, and code our experiences.
0:22.8	But this week, researchers reported a surprising finding about memory in snails.
0:28.9	What does that mean?
0:29.8	Well, joining us to talk about it and other science news from the week is Amy Nordrum.
0:34.8	News editor at I-Triple-E Spectrum.
0:36.7	She's in our New York studios.
0:38.3	Welcome back, Amy.
0:39.2	Thanks, Ira.
0:39.9	So what's going on with this memory story?
0:42.8	Yeah, this new research out of UCLA could upend some of the current existing theories on how
0:48.5	memories are formed and stored in the brain.
0:50.7	As you said, the common theory has been that the connections between neurons matter most,
0:55.5	but this research suggests that maybe neurons themselves store or at least have a role in storing
1:00.8	memories once they're formed in our brains. This research was done with snails, marine snails.
1:06.7	Researchers at UCLA were able to extract RNA from one set of snails that they had applied electrical shocks to
1:13.0	and show increased sensitivity in another group of snails that had not ever received those shocks.
1:18.0	So it's also a form of learning, but these researchers are saying that this suggests that RNA plays a more important role in forming memories than we previously thought.
1:26.3	How did they know that the memories were moved around?
1:30.2	Well, they actually were able to then test sensitivity in the snails that received the RNA that had
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