This research represents a major series of techincal triumphs, but the lay press versions of the story are somewhat misleading. There is no real learning going on, at least in the sense of synaptic modification. This is not really a brain system which exhibits information processing, reward & punishment, self organization, or any of the other classical ideas of brain learning.
According to the author's comments at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=126880&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=191&mode=thread&cid=10614281
it's basically a system of adaptation to input and if the network were disconnected from the interface for some amount of minutes, it would return to a baseline state (ie have "forgotten")
Think of the neurons as springs, they adapt in a very characteristic way to input (as a spring's force increases with stretching), but on a time scale of minutes. By engineering the interface carefully, they end up with a system that depends on this pattern of adaptation, and therefore the system appears to "learn", as the airplane is initially unstable but becomes stable. It is not, however, performing any kind of long term synaptic modification, or cellular reorganization.
Very cool stuff techniques though. This is the same group that built a wheeled robot that "learned" to navigate in a similar way. Their expertise in keeping a brain culture alive for a long time and then using it is stunning, to say the least.
http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/groups/potter/index.html
-Brad
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