Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Brain in a dish in 1972, Atari released Pong, a ping-pong video game, which was welcomed by many people.

Now, thanks to a team of neuroscientists, the brain cells in the petri dish are also enjoying the game. The scientists who completed the initiative called these "brain cell players"DishBrain" (brains in dishes).

They have shown that even without the brain, brain cells can still show signs of intellectual activity.

The brain in the dish is made up of two different types of brain cells, one differentiated from human stem cells and the other from the brain of mouse embryos. Scientists grow these cells in petri dishes, which are mounted on a special chip with a system that teaches cells to play pong.

The chip below sends a signal to brain cells telling them where the ping-pong ball is on the screen. When the ping-pong ball is on the left side, the electrode on the left side of the chip discharges; on the right side, the electrode on the right side discharges. At the same time, the distance between the ping-pong ball and the racket is indicated by the frequency of the electrical signal.

Scientists use electrical probes to provide feedback to brain cells: the closer the racket is to the ping-pong ball, the stronger the feedback, which means the better time to swing the ball.

[the chip seen under the scanning electron microscope and the nerve cells on the chip] "the most wonderful and innovative thing about this study is that it gives brain cells a sense-that is, the feedback system. The significance of this point is that brain cells can make their own 'judgments'." Karl Friston, a neuroscientist at University College London and a member of the research team, said: "these cells have learned to take action to make their judgment a reality as much as possible. This form of self-organization is not the result of artificial training, because brain cells are not like pets, they have no sense of reward and punishment, so you can't train them in the traditional way. Therefore, it can be said that it is remarkable that they have been able to make such achievements. "

Although previous experiments have detected the activity of nerve cells with chips, this is the first time that humans have stimulated nerve cells with specific signals, according to bionic "sandboxie" scientists.

With the "brain in a dish", scientists can use real brain cells, rather than computer models, to study neurodegenerative diseases and develop drugs to treat them.

"this study is very promising," Freston said. "it means that when testing the efficacy of drugs, we no longer have to worry about developing 'digital twins'.

In theory, we now have the ultimate bionic sandboxie to test drugs and genetic mutations. The composition of this kind of 'sandboxie' is exactly the same as our brain, all are nerve cells. "

However, before using it to test the efficacy of drugs, neuroscientists want to observe the effect of alcohol on the brain in a dish.

Brett Kagan, chief scientist at Australian biotech startup Cortical Labs, said: "work so far has shown that we can interfere with the activity of nerve cells to force them to change their behavior to produce intellectual performance.

At the moment, we are drawing a dose-response curve of brain cells to ethanol, simply to 'get drunk' brain cells and see if they get worse at playing games like drunken people. "

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