"This new research is tremendously exciting as firstly the biological brain controls its own moving robot body, and secondly it will enable us to investigate how the brain learns and memorises its experiences.

This research will move our understanding forward of how brains work, and could have a profound effect on many areas of science and medicine," said Professor Kevin Warwick from the School of Systems Engineering.

"One of the fundamental questions that scientists are facing today is how we link the activity of individual neurons with the complex behaviours that we see in whole organisms. This project gives us a really unique opportunity to look at something which may exhibit complex behaviours, but still remain closely tied to the activity of individual neurons. Hopefully we can use that to go some of the way to answer some of these very fundamental questions," said Dr Ben Whalley from the School of Pharmacy.