DishBrain could be the first example of a tiny brain that can learn different skills, including gaming.
The human brain is fascinating and although it has not been fully discovered how far it can go, constant studies carried out by experts show us that it is full of secrets.
Each time the experiments that seek to understand the reliefs of intelligence or certain cognitive abilities are more complex and, as science and technology advance, researchers come to more illuminating conclusions about human nature. But yes, they never cease to surprise us; and, very surely, in the future we will continue to find more and more interesting details about our own anatomy. Thus, what concerns us today has perplexed many.
Cells have very particular capabilities
Recently, researchers at a biotech company called Cortical Labs have grown a culture of brain cells in a lab, yet what’s amazing is that these have learned to play a version of Pong, thanks to the fact that the team provided them with such knowledge. Scientists claim that this is the first demonstrated example of a kind of “mini-brain” who has been able to be taught to perform tasks with a specific objective. The aforementioned ‘mini-brain’ “(…) is capable of receiving information from an external source, processing it and responding to it in real time” explained Dr. Brett Kagan to the BBC – the main author of an article published in Neuron about this research-, during an interview.
For a better understanding, it should be mentioned that the culture consisted of 800,000 brain cells that were given the name “DishBrain”. Meanwhile, the researchers placed mouse cells (derived from embryonic brains) and human cells extracted from stem cells on top of an array of electrodes to which the Pong was attached, as noted by experts.
Through electrical impulses, the information about the position of the ball in the game was sent to neurons. Subsequently, the array was responsible for moving the paddle up and down based on signals from neurons. The DishBrain received a solid and strong feedback signal (from the external stimuli) once the paddle hit the ball, being random and with a short pulse if it missed.
In this sense, the scientists who considered that the culture is too primitive to have consciousness, observed that the DishBrain showed signs of “apparent learning to the five minutes of game in real time that were not observed in the control conditions”. After playing Pong for about 20 minutes, the crop was improving his game skills. This means that During this process, the cells were reorganizing themselves, developing their own connection networks and, therefore, learning.
“They changed their activity in a way that is very consistent with them really behaving like a dynamic system,” Kagan said. “For example, the ability of neurons to change and adapt their activity as a result of experience increases over time, which is consistent with what we see with the rate of cell learning“.
The future for DishBrain
Fortunately for the scientists, the investigation yielded satisfactory results, so in the future will continue to experiment with DishBrain. Only now they will focus on studying how drugs and alcohol affect the culture’s ability to play Pong – this with the aim of verifying if it is a kind of substitute for a human brain. For his part, Kagan has high expectations for Dishbrain -and even more evolved versions of it-, especially since he hopes it can be used in treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Meanwhile, researchers at Stanford University grew stem cells in human brain tissue, which were transplanted into newborn rats. These were called “brain organoids” to later be integrated into the brain of rodents. And, after a few months, the scientists were able to realize that the culture was not only successful, but that it spread in the cerebral hemispheres of the rats, representing a third of them.
In this sense, the best part of having discovered the ability of neurons to learn is that organoids could be used to study neurodegenerative disorders more closely and even to test drugs intended to treat neuropsychiatric diseases.
Although, of course, there is the possibility that genetic defects have their incidence in these transplants, but we will not know until, in the future, scientists are sure of all these details.