Brain cells at play!

 Brain cells playing video games – this may seem very Sci-Fi but that is something that has

come up in the journal Neuron of the company Cortical Labs. They claim to have fabricated

the first “sentient” [ In Latin ‘sentient’ means feeling] in-vitro grown ‘mini-brain’ in a Petri

dish – hence they termed it DishBrain. DishBrain is an in vitro conglomeration of neural cells

taken from humans and rodents which are further integrated with in silico computing across a

high-density multielectrode array. By means of electrophysiological stimulation and

recording, cultures are conceptualized in a simulated game world, mimicking the 1972

arcade-like game “Pong.” In response to being subjected to a stimulated niche, the cells

generated electrical activity of their own manifesting it further by expending less energy as

the game continued, consecutively as the ball passed a certain paddle thereby restarting the

game with the ball, now at a new random point, they expended manifold measures of energy

trying to calibrate the new situation. DishBrain often missed the ball, but the success rate

confirms that it is not a mere chance of probability.

DishBrain, a sentient system of 800,000 neural cells on a dish, under observation has

apparently learned to play the game without being taught, so it is taken to be more flexible

and adaptable. However, the entire event has been carried out by the cells with no

consciousness as a human brain would, but it is claimed that it has responded in a way a

humane brain usually does. The scientific venture trained a considerate mass of connected

human neural cells to react to the stimulations in the game or simply what we say playing a

game.

The mass coined as a cyborg by the inventors was a result of placing stem cells of humans on

the zeal of a micro-electric array, where they proliferated into brain cells. In their in vitro

niche, the neural cells can both stimulate other neural cells and demark the activity or

responses of others around them. Electrical signals are conveyed to the signal cue to guide

them to the location of the ball. For example, if electrodes are to the left of a cluster fire, the

neural cells on the petri dish know that the ball is to their right wing. The displacement of the

signal cue gives the neural cell information regarding frequency. In the actual Pong game, the

paddle is only capable of swaying left and right, and in line with the indigenous game, the

specific goal is to move the paddle into the path of the ball.

The cyborg was trained to play the game in a similar fashion as humans are taught

something—by playing the game a number of times to learn how to move the paddle in ways

that result in the achievement of the goal. In this particular case of DishBrain, it was

constructive feedback in the form of electronic signal cues in the electrodes.

The entire concept is aimed at opening new doors in the field of synthetic biological

intelligence. The neural cell culture demonstrates the ability to undergo self-organization in a

target-oriented manner in response to exiguous sensory signaling cues pivoting around the

consequences of their actions, which we call synthetic biological intelligence – in simple

words, it is competent to take in information from an external source, process it and

formulate a response in real-time.

The model is aimed at studying the response of treatment procedures for neurodegenerative

diseases such as Alzheimer’s. the researchers plan to study the impact of alcohol on the

efficiency of the DishBrain to play pong because the model is not merely aimed at looking

for the presence of activity but to understand the ability of neural cells to process information.

However, exploring the true functions of the ‘mini-brain’ will only highlight its prospects in

the research field.

Reference :

Kagan, B. J., Kitchen, A. C., Tran, N. T., Habibollahi, F., Khajehnejad, M., Parker, B. J., . . .

Friston, K. J. (2022). In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a

simulated game world. Neuron. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.09.001