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

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: