WATCH: Scientists Teach Brain Cells To Play Pong In A Petri Dish

By Syakir Roslan  •  20 Oct 2022 in News

Thirsty for JUICE content? Quench your cravings on our Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp

Remember Pong? That classic game with the two bars and the bouncing ball. It was Atari times (late 70s) so cut this game some slack Gen-Zers. Pong had to walk so the FIFA games could sprint.

The game has extremely simple mechanics. So much so, that a group of scientists from Melbourne, Australia conducted an experiment using brain cells in a petri dish – and as the title suggests, actually managed to teach the cells to play Pong.

The project, affectionately labelled ‘DishBrain‘ by the research team, is a lab-grown cell system comprised of over 800,000 human and mouse neurons.

The team booted up a virtual simulation of Pong after mounting the aforementioned neurons onto a monitoring device where activity was recorded in “spikes”. The brain cells were used as paddles for the game to hit and catch a simulated ball.

When the spikes got stronger it meant that a neuron moved a paddle and hit the ball. This particular experiment is one of the very first times whereby cells like these have shown the ability to perform goal-oriented tasks.

Scientists now believe that the results gained from this experiment could leave a large, lasting impact on the world of medicine as a whole, in turn providing better solutions to brain-related illnesses.

Check out this video to see the brain cells playing Pong: