I've also said Nicolelis is a showman. In the case of this rat experiment I don't see how it furthers his work on overcoming paralysis but he's the genius not me and if he wants to hook a couple rats together just to show he can, more power to him.
From Nature:
Intercontinental mind-meld unites two rats
But critics are sceptical about predicted organic computer....MORE
...Nicolelis says that the work, published today in Scientific Reports1, is the first step towards constructing an organic computer that uses networks of linked animal brains to solve tasks. But other scientists who work on neural implants are sceptical. Lee Miller, a physiologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, says that Nicolelis’s team has made many important contributions to neural interfaces, but the current paper could be mistaken for a “poor Hollywood science-fiction script”. He adds, “It is not clear to what end the effort is really being made.” ...
