Last year, Monash University scientists created the "DishBrain" – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.

Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue gets military funding::undefined

  • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    The plate is a consumable dish that is designed to fit into this guy: Maestro Pro.

    It’s kind of the iMac Pro of reading electrode signals from cells. It’s a high end piece of lab equipment, and popular for this kind of work. Which is great: it means that this work is more replicatable, as I’m sure lots of people are going to want to try variations on this. There’s a good chance my old boss is at least considering it right now.

    Reward in this context means a nice, soothing syncronized electrical pulses. I’m curious whether more informed experts would validate that this constitutes a desirable effect, but that’s what they went with. The alternative was random noise.

    For you, this would be like, bad: four seconds of audio static. Good: four seconds of metronome.

    • cryshlee@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      The possibility that disembodied neurons prefer synchronized “soothing” pulses as opposed to chaotic noise is infinitely more interesting to me than this article.