200,000 live brain neurons launched Doom. And this is not a metaphor.
Australian startup Cortical Labs took skin and blood cells from real donors, reprogrammed them into neurons, grew them on a silicon chip — and made this biomass play the 1993 shooter.
How it works:
→ 59 electrodes read and send impulses to neurons in real time (delay < 1 ms)
→ Doom video stream is converted into patterns of electrical stimulation — this is the neurons' "vision"
→ If neurons output one pattern — the character shoots. Another — moves to the right
→ Learning through reward/punishment: neurons adapt on their own
Result: independent developer Sean Cole wrote the integration from scratch in a week via Python API.
The neurons started navigating the game in 5 minutes — compared to 90 minutes for a standard RL algorithm.
youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE
