Thursday, March 12, 2026

Scientists Taught a Petri Dish of Brain Cells to Play Doom

In 2022, the team at Cortical Labs taught 800,000 brain cells in a petri dish connected to a computer how to play the 1970s game Pong. Now, years later, the same team is leveling up as they claim their CL1 system is the "world's first code deployable biological computer," and is able to play Doom.

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2026, man www.newscientist.com/article/2517 ...

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-- Mark Lemley (@marklemley.bsky.social) Mar 6, 2026 at 2:19 PM

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More from the article ...

... With its own active Reddit thread and booming fan base, the first-person shooter simulation game requires players to slay their opponents as they traverse through its universe. Previous iterations of the game featured pixelated rendering, while newer versions show more complex characters and landscapes. But translating a game made for human eyes was a challenge no matter the pixels.

"Doom is chaos. It's 3D. It has enemies. It needs to explore its environment and it's hard," Cortical Labs said. "To bridge that gap, we needed to translate the digital world of Doom into the biological language of neurons, which is electricity." ...



#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-03-10 03:26 PM

Related ...

Startup Builds Data Centers Powered by Human Brain Cells
slguardian.org

... A biotechnology startup is developing experimental data centers powered by living human brain cells in a radical approach that could eventually reshape the future of computing. According to a report by Bloomberg, Australia-based Cortical Labs is building small data centers that run on lab-grown neurons placed on silicon chips, an innovation that researchers believe could one day challenge traditional processors used in artificial intelligence systems. ...


#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-03-10 03:30 PM

Petri dish players always camp

#3 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2026-03-10 03:32 PM

800,000 brain cells? It already graduated beyond posting here.

#4 | Posted by kwrx25 at 2026-03-11 03:10 PM

Said Petri Dish burst out laughing at Pedo 47's claim of legless dead people walking around.

#5 | Posted by reinheitsgebot at 2026-03-11 03:13 PM

There's hope for republicans after all.

#6 | Posted by Nixon at 2026-03-12 07:49 AM

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