The neural-network system, even at this experimental stage, works so well that Dr Mozer says that he misses it terribly when it is turned off.

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Even if the complete repair of a broken nervous system is a distant dream, researchers think that engineering better neural prosthetics will help treat different nervous system diseases.

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Dr Mozer's household-control system consists of a number of different neural networks, each in charge of one aspect of his domestic economy.

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Among them are neural cells to treat spinal cord injury and degenerative nervous system diseases, cardiomyocytes to treat heart disease, pancreatic islet cells to treat diabetes, dendritic cells for cancer therapy, chondrocytes for arthritis, osteoblasts to rebuild bone and hepatocytes for drug discovery and liver failure.

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Although the artificial neural networks used in the research are much less complex than the human visual system, this simplicity helped the researchers to identify and further understand what they believe is a fundamental principle behind why we see illusion: the statistics of our past visual experiences.

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Surprisingly, the neural stem cells made their way far and wide in the developing embryos, from the nervous system to the liver, lung and intestine.

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Local networks mean the system hunts ideas that are already linked up in the brain (i.e. already established in neural nets).

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