How Neurons in a Dish Learned to Play “Pong”

The DishBrain system can send and receive electrophysiological signals to and from living neurons, training the cells to accomplish a task.

Written byDan Robitzski

| 5 min read

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Microscope image of interconnected neurons, which appear as colorful starbursts of light.

A microscopy image of DishBrain where fluorescent markers show different types of cells: neurons and axons are green, purple marks neurons, red marks dendrites, and blue marks all cells. Where multiple markers are present, colors are merged and typically appear as yellow or pink.

Image credit:CORTICAL LABS

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A longstanding goal of artificial intelligence research is to develop artificial general intelligence—that is, the sort of conscious or humanlike AI seen in science fiction. Engineers frequently pursue this “AGI” by trying to develop algorithms or AI architectures based on the human brain’s ability to learn and integrate information, and to piece together context in such a way that it can truly understand something. But in a new approach to recreating learning and intelligence, a system called the DishBrain instead merges living brain tissue with technology.

DishBrain, a product of the Australian biotech company Cortical Labs, is a platform that can teach living neurons to perform tasks by stimulating them with electrophysiological signals, then reading the resulting activity in the cells. In new work published today (October 12) in Neuron, researchers showed that cultures of mouse or human neurons were capable of learning to play the classic 1972 Atari video ...

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Meet the Author

Dan Robitzski
Dan is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles who joined The Scientist as a reporter and editor in 2021. Ironically, Dan’s undergraduate degree and brief career in neuroscience inspired him to write about research rather than conduct it, culminating in him earning a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University in 2017. In 2018, an Undark feature Dan and colleagues began at NYU on a questionable drug approval decision at the FDA won first place in the student category of the Association of Health Care Journalists' Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. Now, Dan writes and edits stories on all aspects of the life sciences for the online news desk, and he oversees the “The Literature” and “Modus Operandi” sections of the monthly TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. Read more of his work at danrobitzski.com.
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