Scientists Taught a Petri Dish of Brain Cells to Play Doom

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

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. "Pong was much simpler. There was a direct relationship: The ball went up, the paddle went up. It was a direct input, output relationship," the research team explained in a YouTube video. "Doom was much more complex."

Posted by lamplighter at 03:25 PM | 3 COMMENTS | permalink

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