Researchers at Duke university have developed a neuroprosthesis that gives rats the ability to detect infrared light, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which mammals are normally blind.

After training a group of lab rats to visit "reward ports" inside a test chamber whenever LEDs at the ports lit up, the researchers implanted an array of tiny stimulating electrodes into the touch-sensing part of each rat's brain. The electrodes were wired to to an infrared sensor, which the researchers surgically affixed to the rats' foreheads.



After reintroducing the rat cyborgs to the test chamber, the researchers began swapping out the LEDs at the reward ports for infrared light sources. At first, when they switched those lights on, the rats would stop and scratch their faces--an indication that their tactile neurons were doing their job as usual and interpreting the electrical signals to mean that something was touching the rats' whiskers.

But over the course of about a month, the animals began responding to the infrared lights the same way they responded to the LEDs before--by scurrying toward the port with the active light source: