Greg Gage: Electrical experiments with plants that count and communicate
גרג גייג': ניסויים חשמליים עם צמחים שסופרים ומתקשרים
TED Fellow Greg Gage helps kids investigate the neuroscience in their own backyards. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
the next generation of neuroscientists
לאמן את הדור הבא של הנוירולוגים
neuroscience research equipment
ברמה אקדמית
in middle schools and high schools.
בחטיבות הביניים ובתיכונים.
about the brain, which is very complex,
דבר שהוא מאוד מסובך,
question about neuroscience,
על מדעי המוח,
that their cat or dog has a brain,
שלחתול או לכלב שלהם יש מוח,
or even a small insect has a brain,
או אפילו לחרק קטן יש מוח,
that a plant or a tree
help describe a little bit
living things have brains versus not?"
שליצורים חיים מסוימים יש מוח ולאחרים לא?"
with the classification
because it is electrical.
כיוון שהיא חשמלית.
to stimuli in the world
להגיב במהירות לגירוי מהעולם
and push back on a student,
you say that plants don't have brains,
אתה אומר שלצמחים אין מוח,
"But that's a slow movement.
"אבל זו תנועה איטית.
That could be a chemical process."
זה יכול להיות תהליך כימי."
the Royal Governor of North Carolina,
השליט המלכותי בצפון קרולינה,
it made its way over to Europe,
got to study this plant,
יכל לחקור את הצמח הזה,
plant in the world.
that was an evolutionary wonder.
about this plant.
is that the plant can count.
שהצמח הזה יכול לספור.
out of the way.
in the classroom with students.
בכיתה עם תלמידים.
an experiment on electrophysiology,
באלקטרופיזיולוגיה,
of the body's electrical signal,
or from muscles.
here on my wrists.
or the electrocardiogram.
או אלקטרוקרדיוגרמה.
from neurons in my heart
what's called action potentials,
meaning it moves quickly up and down,
ופעולה כלומר זה נע מהר למעלה ולמטה,
the signal that you see here.
of what we'll be looking at right here,
של מה שאנחנו נראה כאן,
encodes information
introduce you to the mimosa,
in Central America and South America,
I'm going to show you
tend to curl up.
שהעלים נוטים להתקפל פנימה.
could be that it scares away insects
יכולה להיות שזה מרחיק חרקים
Now, that's interesting.
אז זה מעניין.
the electrical potential from my body,
את הפוטנציאל החשמלי מהגוף שלי,
potential from this plant, this mimosa.
מהצמח הזה, המימוזה.
is I've got a wire wrapped around the stem,
שיש לי חוט שמלופף סביב הגבעול,
engineering joke. Alright.
and tap the leaf here,
ולטפוח על העלה כאן,
at the electrical recording
I've got to scale it down.
שאני צריך קנה מידה קטן יותר.
that is happening inside the plant.
to the end of the stem,
we would move our muscles,
אנחנו נזיז את השרירים שלנו,
it opens up, releases the water,
התא נפתח, ומשחרר את המים,
and the leaf falls.
encoding information to move. Alright?
שמקודד מידע בשביל לזוז. בסדר?
the Venus flytrap here,
דיונאת הזבובים כאן,
at what happens inside the leaf
to be a fly right now.
you're going to notice
and those are trigger hairs.
אלו הן שערות לגירוי להתחלת פעולה.
one of the hairs right now.
a beautiful action potential.
אנחנו מקבלים פוטנציאל פעולה יפה.
about the behavior of the flytrap.
על ההתנהגות של דיונאת הזבובים.
a long time to open the traps back up --
לפתוח את המלכודות בחזרה --
if there's no fly inside of it.
that many flies throughout the year.
כל כך הרבה זבובים במהלך השנה.
most of its energy from the sun.
את רוב האנרגיה שלו מהשמש.
some nutrients in the ground with flies.
חלק מהחומרים המזינים מהקרקע בזבובים.
a handful of times
מספר מועט של פעמים.
to make really darn sure
before the flytrap snaps shut.
לפני שמלכודת הזבובים נסגרת במהירות.
touching of those hairs.
that there's a high probability,
that it's going to be clicked together,
שהוא הולך להיתפס,
action potential,
and it doesn't fire again,
then the flytrap will close.
אז מלכודת הזבובים הולכת להיסגר.
the Venus flytrap again.
for more than 20 seconds.
when I touch the hair a second time.
כשאני נוגע בשערה בפעם השניה.
We get a second action potential,
אנחנו מקבלים פוטנציאל פעולה שני,
the leaf a few times.
actually doing a computation.
בעצם עושה חישוב.
if there's a fly inside the trap,
what the Tigers' score is.
self-actualization problems.
is something that's very similar to us,
to communicate using electricity.
different ions than we do,
of these action potentials,
של פוטנציאל הפעולה,
potential in the mimosa.
an action potential in a human.
information is passed.
is we can use those action potentials
להשתמש בפונטציאלי הפעולה האלו
בין מינים של צמחים.
plant-to-plant communicator,
is we've created a brand new experiment
the action potential from a Venus flytrap,
מדיונאת הזבובים,
into the sensitive mimosa.
אל המימוזה הרגישה.
that are sending that information
ששולחים את המידע הזה
of an action potential.
from the Venus flytrap
all the stems of the mimosa?
the behavior of the mimosas
לייצר את ההתנהגות של המימוזה
and trigger this mimosa right now
לתחילת הפעולה של המימוזה עכשיו
of the Venus flytrap.
באחת השערות של דיונאת הזבובים.
about touch from one plant to another.
מצמח אחד לאחר.
something about plants today,
על לצמחים היום,
to help teach neuroscience
בשביל ללמד על מערכת העצבים והמוח
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Greg Gage - NeuroscientistTED Fellow Greg Gage helps kids investigate the neuroscience in their own backyards.
Why you should listen
As half of Backyard Brains, neuroscientist and engineer Greg Gage builds the SpikerBox -- a small rig that helps kids understand the electrical impulses that control the nervous system. He's passionate about helping students understand (viscerally) how our brains and our neurons work, because, as he said onstage at TED2012, we still know very little about how the brain works -- and we need to start inspiring kids early to want to know more.
Before becoming a neuroscientist, Gage worked as an electrical engineer making touchscreens. As he told the Huffington Post: "Scientific equipment in general is pretty expensive, but it's silly because before [getting my PhD in neuroscience] I was an electrical engineer, and you could see that you could make it yourself. So we started as a way to have fun, to show off to our colleagues, but we were also going into classrooms around that time and we thought, wouldn't it be cool if you could bring these gadgets with us so the stuff we were doing in advanced Ph.D. programs in neuroscience, you could also do in fifth grade?" His latest pieces of gear: the Roboroach, a cockroach fitted with an electric backpack that makes it turn on command, and BYB SmartScope, a smartphone-powered microscope.
Greg Gage | Speaker | TED.com