A few hundred thousand live brain cells lumped together in a petri dish — a type of laboratory dish made of glass or plastic — have learned to play the classic video pong game of Atari. Led by Australian startup Cortical Labs, the scientific experiment created a kind of ‘cyborg brain’ and allowed the cells to be part of a ‘virtual game world’.
Many teams around the world have studied networks of neurons in a similar way, often turning them into brain-like organoids. However, the new study determined that “micro brains” perform goal-directed tasks, respond to pulses of electricity, and can improve their performance at pong faster than artificial intelligence (AI).
The emerging biotech company used 800,000 to 1 million live brain cells, human or rodent, during the experiment. These cells were grown in a system called DishBrain (dish brain, in free translation from English), a set of microelectrodes capable of stimulating and detecting new electrical signals.
Creation is a kind of hybrid biotechnology chip. Researchers are able to stimulate cellular learning and even have them restructure them when faced with specific problems.
The experiment used a simplified version of bong, in which the miniature brain had no direct opponent. The human cell system took about 5 minutes to learn the intent of the game, as it took the AI at least 90 minutes to learn to play, according to Cortical Labs.
Watch how the Atari Classic Pong works:
Scientists suggest that brain cells “thought” they were part of the virtual world while playing. More specifically, they thought it was the game racket. In a bong diagram, a signal was sent to the right or left of the matrix and indicated where the ball was. Neurons in the brain cells returned signals to move the racket.
The study was published on the BioRxiv virtual platform and has not yet been peer-reviewed. New experiments should test the capacity of the DishBrain system to the fullest extent, as the researchers stated in a science article:
Harnessing the computational power of living neurons to create artificial biological intelligence (SBI), once restricted to the realm of science fiction, is now within the reach of human innovation.
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