Science & technology | Biological neural networks

Nerve cells in a dish can learn to play Pong

That may help design better information-processing techniques

Oct 12th 2022

Something new is on the menu of neuroscience. It is called “DishBrain”. This is not a recently discovered regional delicacy, but rather a network of nerve cells, grown on a computer chip, which is capable of interacting with the outside world via that chip. As a proof of principle, Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs, a small firm in Melbourne, Australia, and his collaborators, have taught the cells to play Pong, an early video game that resembles an electronic form of table tennis.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Brain games”