I know I'm a little late on this one, but I think it's cool.  Some scientists have washed some fetal rat brain cells in a special solution to separate them, and put them into what amounts to a circuit board.  Through feeding and stimulation, the brain cells have developed networks, and they fire electrical impulses just like they are supposed to.  But the nature of the "circuit board" they live in is such that the researchers can tell which part of the grey matter is firing.  It has, what seems to me, a pinout of sorts on the bottom.

Occasionally, they'll fire in huge synchronous blasts, apparently out of boredom, like our daydreaming.  By stimulating them regularly, simlar to our sensory input, the brain cells can become much more predictable. 

Even better, when the scientists map which parts of the brain react, and how they react, to various stimuli, they can use it as a control to an external reference.  The example in the article shows that by applying 1volt to a part of the "brain", and getting a 1 millivolt reaction in another part of the brain, they can put the "brain chip" in a mini robot and use a sensorthat outputs 1 volt when a wall is straight ahead, and then use the generated 1 millivolt to control a system that would turn the bot.

While the researchers have lofty goals like understanding Alzheimers and developing a host of techniques to relieve and cure scores of brain-based illnesses, I just think it's friggin awesome that we're one step closer artificially intelligent robots, that aren't really artificially intelligent.  Think, like, the Terminator on a cheese hunt.