By: Andrew Bian
Just about a month ago, scientists in Australia discovered that basic human nerve cells
in a dish could play a simple videogame.
Australians in Cortical Labs wanted to see if nerve cells in a dish could play video games. This was a unique idea because scientists have only ever grown nerve cells to measure their activity, not to get a particular reaction. The project was named “DishBrain”.
To communicate with the neurons in the dish, Dr. Brett Kagan and Dr. Hon Weng Chong grew the cells over a small electronic chip. These chips had something called electrodes, which could send signals from the chip to the neuron and receive signals back.
The game they chose was Pong, an early computer game that was similar to ping-pong. The player’s goal is to not let the bouncing ball from hitting the side of the screen, and The player could move his or her paddle up or down to bounce the ball back.
A computer sent electrical signals to the cells indicating where the ball was and how it was moving. DishBrain’s nerve cells would have a reaction, and it would be sent back to the computer. But how would DishBrain’s neurons do something that the scientists wanted them to do? The scientists’ solution was very smart. When the neural cells did something they wanted them to do, like moving the paddle so the ball didn’t hit the side, the neural cells would be rewarded. The cells received a predictable pattern of electrical signals when they did something good. And when they didn’t do what researchers desired, then they would get noisy, unpredictable signals with no pattern.
Surprisingly, DishBrain learned how to play in just five minutes. As it played for longer, it could keep the ball surviving for longer. Although it never got good at the game, it played exceptionally for some neurons in a dish. The results suggest that even small groups of neurons have impressive power to organize and learn quickly – even in unusual conditions.
I think it is awesome to see how neurons in a dish could play a simple game. It made me feel like my brain could do even more fabulous things having a hundred billion nerve cells, thinking that only 600,000 nerve cells could play a game.