🔒 Brain in a box

In Melbourne, entire racks of devices are already up and running, linking cultures of human neurons with silicon circuits.

In October 2022, Brett Kagan’s team at Cortical Labs published in Neuron findings that read like a rejected science-fiction script. About 800,000 neurons—some cultures derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?), others from primary cortical neurons of mouse embryos—were placed on a microelectrode array. The researchers wired this setup into a simplified version of the game Pong. The system received information about the ball via electrical pulses. The paddle’s movements depended on the neurons’ activity. The authors observed signs of learning within five minutes of play. That’s not proof that the culture understood the rules of table tennis. The layer of living cells could simply change its activity as a result of coupling with the environment.