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

  • cryshleeEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    What does “commercially available plate” and “reward” mean in those respective contexts?

    • AndyEnglish
      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.

      • cryshleeEnglish
        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.

      • QuokkaEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        What’s the raspberry pi of the industry?