Mind in Vitro: a complementary approach to physical intelligence

From the perspective of synthesizing fundamental principles of biological processing and control, robophysics approaches that emphasize the role of the embodiment have been successful in bridging animal science and engineering, revealing, for example, simple yet powerful strategies for gait organization, adaptation and locomotion, from snakes to fish. However, these creatures do possess a neural infrastructure that supports, synergizes and compounds physical intelligence. In order to aid dissecting principles of neural computations, pertinent to locomotion and beyond, here we discuss potential opportunities afforded by a 'Mind in Vitro' approach, whereby in vitro living processing architectures may be realized and operated by spatially distributing and connecting neural populations of various nature onto input/output/actuation substrates.