Neanderthal brains re-created in a lab could one day be put into crab-like ROBOTS

A team of researchers hope lab-grown brains from 550,000-year-old Neanderthals will be able to pilot the movements of a crab-like robot. The unbelievable experiment is using Neanderthal DNA to grow pea-sized brains masses, which are hooked-up to robots to test the capabilities of the electrical signals detected within the tissue. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine are simultaneously growing brain tissue from human DNA to plug into the same crab-like machines. They hope the difference in robot movements achieved by the lab-grown brains of modern man and Neanderthals, who diverged from human beings around 550,000 to 765,000 years ago, will offer vital clues about the minds of our early ancestors. The lab-grown brains cannot achieve conscious thoughts or feelings – but can mimic the basic structure of a developed brain, and reveal key differences in how the nerve cells function.