Queensland brain institute, Research institute in St Lucia, Australia

Human and mouse neurons in a dish learned to play the video game Pong, researchers report. The experiments are evidence that even brain cells in a dish can exhibit inherent intelligence, modifying their behaviour over time."From worms to flies to humans, neurons are the starting block for generalized intelligence," says first author Brett Kagan (@ANeuroExplorer), chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs in Melbourne, Australia. "So, the question was, can we interact with neurons in a way to harness that inherent intelligence?"To start, the researchers connected the neurons to a computer in such a way where the neurons received feedback on whether their in-game paddle was hitting the ball. They monitored the neuron's activity and responses to this feedback using electric probes that recorded "spikes" on a grid.The spikes got stronger the more a neuron moved its paddle and hit the ball. When neurons missed, their playstyle was critiqued by a software program created by Cortical Labs. This demonstrated that the neurons could adapt activity to a changing environment, in a goal-oriented way, in real time."We chose Pong due to its simplicity and familiarity, but, also, it was one of the first games used in machine learning, so we wanted to recognize that," says Kagan, who worked with collaborators from 10 other institutions on the project."An unpredictable stimulus was applied to the cells, and the system as a whole would reorganize its activity to better play the game and to minimize having a random response," he says. "You can also think that just playing the game, hitting the ball and getting predictable stimulation, is inherently creating more predictable environments."The theory behind this learning is rooted in the free-energy principle. Simply put, the brain adapts to its environment by changing either its world view or its actions to better fit the world around it.Pong wasn't the only game the research team tested. "You know when the Google Chrome browser crashes and you get that dinosaur that you can make jump over obstacles (Project Bolan). We've done that and we've seen some nice preliminary results, but we still have more work to do building new environments for custom purposes," says Kagan.Future directions of this work have potential in disease modeling, drug discoveries, and expanding the current understanding of how the brain works and how intelligence arises."This is the start of a new frontier in understanding intelligence," Kagan says. "It touches on the fundamental aspects of not only what it means to be human but what it means to be alive and intelligent at all, to process information and be sentient in an ever changing, dynamic world."( With inputs from ANI )Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

Queensland Brain InstituteFOLLOW

Queensland brain institute, Latest News

Canberra, Oct 17 Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Monday warned the country is facing an economic downgrades amid ... ...

Canberra, Oct 17 The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have warned parents and guard to be aware of their ... ...

Leading upto the ICC T20 World Cup 2022, Australia is still managing the workloads of all-rounders Marcus Stoinis and ... ...

Mumbai, Oct 15 Any team needs to usually win at least 6-7 matches to win a tournament like ... ...

Hosts Australia will begin their title defence at the ICC Men's T20 World Cup in front of a capacity ... ...

Aurangabad: The new district collector Astik Kumar Pandey said that he knows much about the city having worked in ... ...

In a shocking incident, an Indian student pursuing PhD at the University of South Wales in Sydney has been reportedly ... ...

Human and mouse neurons in a dish learned to play the video game Pong, researchers report. The experiments are evidence that even brain cells in a dish can exhibit inherent intelligence, modifying their behaviour over time. ...