- Head's hundred seals Australia win over England in 1st ODI after Labuschagne strikes
- Dream debut for Wirtz as Leverkusen thump dire Feyenoord
- Myanmar flood death toll climbs to 293: state media
- Israel army says West Bank air strike kills 4 militants
- LIV golfers get green light for US Ryder Cup team, PGA Championship
- US accuses social media giants of 'vast surveillance'
- Ten Hag to bed Hojlund, Mount in carefully when they return for Man Utd
- Breaking bad as McIlroy endures 'weird' day
- EU chief announces $11 bn for nations hit by 'heartbreaking' floods
- Spanish PM, Palestinian leader urge Mideast de-escalation
- New study reinforces theory Covid emerged at Chinese market
- World Bank boosts climate financing by 10 percent
- Bagnaia eyeing summit on home ground in 100th MotoGP
- 'Something was wrong', defendant in French mass rape tells court
- Hezbollah chief admits 'unprecedented' blow in device blasts
- Sales of US existing homes slip slightly in August
- Fear, panic haunt Lebanese after devices explode
- Labuschagne sparks Australia fightback in England ODI opener
- S.Africa's HIV research power couple says fight goes on
- Why is Israel focusing on border with Lebanon?
- Mpox vaccines administered in Rwanda, first in Africa
- US Fed rate cut is 'very positive sign' for economy: Yellen
- Unknown Mozart string trio discovered in Germany
- 'Are we five-year-olds?' F1 drivers won't mind their language
- Brazil judge orders X to reimpose block or face hefty fine
- Munich to rename stadium street after Beckenbauer
- Champions Italy to face Argentina in Davis Cup Final 8
- The winding, fitful path to weight loss drug Ozempic
- Italians defeat American Magic to reach Louis Vuitton Cup final
- Norris has 'nothing to lose' as he hunts Verstappen in Singapore
- Kyiv 'outraged' at Swiss showing of Russian war film
- French city renames Abbe Pierre square after abuse claims
- Footballer charged after huge cannabis seizure at UK airport
- Vatican recognises Medjugorje shrine, but not Virgin's messages
- Israel bombs Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon after wave of deadly blasts
- Bank of England freezes rate after jumbo US cut
- Playing Nadal is 'kind of a nightmare', says Alcaraz
- Portugal tackles last of deadly northern forest fires
- Ton-up Ashwin lifts India to 339-6 against Bangladesh
- Departing NATO chief warns US against 'isolationism'
- Coming winter 'sternest test yet' for Ukraine energy grid
- Evacuations as tail of Storm Boris floods northeast Italy
- Lebanon's Hezbollah reeling after second wave of deadly blasts
- Taiwan recognises same-sex marriages between Chinese, Taiwanese
- Stock markets rally after jumbo US rate cut
- Gabon's ousted leader Bongo says renouncing politics for good
- Lebanon device blasts: what we know about deadly attacks
- Equity markets rally after jumbo US rate cut
- Late Harrods owner Al-Fayed accused of rape: BBC
- Hong Kong man sentenced 14 months for wearing 'seditious' T-shirt
CMSC | -0.06% | 25.04 | $ | |
BCC | 4.69% | 143.802 | $ | |
JRI | -0.3% | 13.4 | $ | |
RIO | 3.36% | 65.1 | $ | |
BCE | -0.94% | 35.28 | $ | |
GSK | -1.28% | 41.895 | $ | |
SCS | -6.17% | 13.29 | $ | |
RBGPF | 5.79% | 60.5 | $ | |
RYCEF | 5.76% | 6.95 | $ | |
AZN | 0.73% | 79.16 | $ | |
CMSD | 0.16% | 25.02 | $ | |
BTI | -0.7% | 37.615 | $ | |
RELX | 1.69% | 48.185 | $ | |
VOD | -1.49% | 10.08 | $ | |
NGG | -1.6% | 68.95 | $ | |
BP | 1.53% | 32.935 | $ |
'Sentient' brain cells in dish learn to play video game: study
Brain cells living in a dish can learn to play the classic video game Pong, thus demonstrating "intelligent and sentient behavior," Australian neuroscientists argue in a new paper.
Brett Kagan, who led the study published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, told AFP his findings open the door to a new type of research in which neurons could one day be used as biological information processors, complementing digital computers.
"What machines can't do is learn things very quickly -- if you need a machine learning algorithm to learn something, it requires thousands of data samples," he explained.
"But if you ask a human, or train a dog, a dog can learn a trick in two or three tries."
Neurons are the building blocks of intelligence in all animals, from flies to humans.
Kagan, the chief scientific officer at Melbourne-based Cortical labs, set out to answer the question of whether there is a way to harness neurons' inherent intelligence.
To perform their experiment, Kagan and colleagues took mice cells from embryonic brains, and derived human neurons from adult stem cells.
They then grew them on top of microelectrode arrays that could read their activity and stimulate them. The experiments involved a cluster of around 800,000 neurons, roughly the size of a bumblebee brain.
In the "game," a signal was sent from the left or right of the array to indicate where the ball was located, and "DishBrain," as the researchers called it, fired back signals to move the paddle, in a simplified, opponent-free version of Pong.
- 'Sentient, but not conscious' -
One of the major hurdles was figuring out how to "teach" the neurons.
In the past, it has been proposed to give them a shot of the "feel good" hormone dopamine to reward a correct action -- but that was very difficult to achieve in practice in a time-sensitive way.
Instead, the team relied on a theory called the "free energy principle" that was coined by the paper's senior author Karl Friston more than a decade ago, which says cells are hardwired to minimize unpredictability in their environments.
When the neurons succeeded in making the paddle hit the ball, they received a "predictable" electrical signal corresponding to success. But when they missed, they were sent a randomized, or "unpredictable" electrical signal.
"The only thing that the neurons could do is actually get better at trying to hit the ball to keep their world controllable and predictable," said Kagan.
The team believes DishBrain is sentient -- which they defined as being able to sense and respond to sensory information in a dynamic way -- but drew the line at calling it "conscious," which implies awareness of being.
DishBrain even tried out another task -- the dinosaur game that appears in Google Chrome when no internet connection is found, and the preliminary results were encouraging, said Kagan.
For their next steps, the team plans to test how DishBrain's intelligence is affected by medicines and alcohol -- though Kagan himself is most excited by the future possibilities of biological computers based on this foundational discovery.
"This is robustly conducted, interesting neuroscience," said Tara Spires-Jones of the Centre for Discovery Brain Science at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study.
"Don't worry, while these dishes of neurons can change their responses based on stimulation, they are not SciFi style intelligence in a dish, these are simple (albeit interesting and scientifically important) circuit responses," she added.
L.Miller--AMWN