Mark Megahan
Dr. Brett Kagan and his team at Cortical Labs wired a dish of brain cells up to a pong game and were amazed when it learned to play, all on it’s own. It’s not real good at it but who knows what would happen if they were to rig up another dish. One for it to play against.
Pong a perfect ‘environment’
The very first “video game” known to man was Pong. Most of us around at the time called it “TV Tennis.” Obsolete video games from the dim and distant 1970’s may not seem like much to today’s average adolescent but they were amazing when they first appeared on the pop culture scene.
The dish of brain cells laying on the counter in Kagan’s lab seemed like it could use a diversion, so his crew set it up to play the simplest game they could think of.
The experiment was documented in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron. Kagan thinks he may have “created the first ‘sentient‘ lab-grown brain in a dish.”
It’s a controversial claim, he admits. His friends call what he did with the Pong game “interesting,” but they aren’t willing to call it “sentience” until it can handle Grand Theft Auto.
Kagan sticks by his assessment. “We could find no better term to describe the device. It is able to take in information from an external source, process it and then respond to it in real time.”
The journal doesn’t mention whether the team gave their Pong playing dish of brain cells a name but they call it “mini-brain” when they talk behind it’s back. “Mini-brains were first produced in 2013, to study microcephaly, a genetic disorder where the brain is too small, and have since been used for research into brain development.”
First time plugged in
Surprisingly, despite all the work done with mini-brains in the past, “this is the first time they have been plugged into, and interacted with, an external environment.”
Pong made a great choice for the experiment because it is so simple to connect up with the wetware. They wired it with sensors giving electrical stimulation reflecting where the ball is, in relation to the paddle. Above or below, and how far away.
In response, the mini-brain figured out Pong on it’s own. Every time the ball passed the paddle the game restarted with the ball at a random point and trajectory. The mini-brain “re-calibrated” itself to the new situation and gradually figured out how to prevent the ball from passing the paddle. In five minutes.
“It often missed the ball – but its success rate was well above random chance.” A lot like a small child’s performance with the same game. Before he gives his pet an opponent to play against, first he wants to teach it beer Pong. “Next, Dr Kagan plans to test the impact alcohol has on the mini-brain’s ability to play.”
While Kagan is convinced his pet mini-brain is intelligent, he has no illusions that it is conscious. It “does not know it is playing Pong in the way a human player would.” Dr. Kagan hopes to use the work to find treatments for Alzheimer’s and similar diseases.
Learning that even a dish of cells can play Pong is a bit of a twist. “When people look at tissues in a dish, at the moment they are seeing if there is activity or no activity. But the purpose of brain cells is to process information in real time. Tapping into their true function unlocks so many more research areas that can be explored in a comprehensive way.”
