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Advertisement Advertisement Nature Machine Intelligence * View all journals * Search * Log in * Explore content * About the journal * Publish with us * Subscribe * Sign up for alerts * RSS feed 1. nature 2. nature machine intelligence 3. news & views 4. article * News & Views * Published: 01 June 2023 Biological intelligence DishBrain plays Pong and promises more * Joshua Goldwag ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5456-6913^1 & * Ge Wang ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2656-7705^2 Nature Machine Intelligence (2023)Cite this article * 25 Accesses * 7 Altmetric * Metrics details Subjects * Biomedical engineering * Cognitive neuroscience * Problem solving An in vitro biological system of cultured brain cells has learned to play Pong. This feat opens up an avenue towards the convergence of biological and machine intelligence. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Technical innovations are often inspired by nature, with a powerful example being the ongoing contributions of neuroscience to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) research. Recent analyses of human and animal neural networks have underlined their superiority over artificial neural networks in terms of external interaction, functional flexibility and energy efficiency^1. To harness this potential, there are growing efforts to use living biological neural networks directly in tasks normally reserved for AI. In December 2022, a platform, the DishBrain system, was developed to study biological neural networks in vitro. The setup uses a high-density multielectrode array to interface with human and mouse cortical neurons for both input and output. This device was implemented in a simulated Pong game environment to induce biological intelligence^2. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access options Access through your institution Access through your institution Change institution Buy or subscribe Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription $29.99 / 30 days cancel any time Learn more Subscribe to this journal Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles $99.00 per year only $8.25 per issue Learn more Rent or buy this article Get just this article for as long as you need it $39.95 Learn more Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Additional access options: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support Fig. 1: DishBrain uses human and mouse brain cells to learn to play a game of Pong through a microelectrode array as the interface. [42256_2023_666_Fig1_HTML] References 1. Zador, A. et al. Nat. Commun. 14, 1597 (2023). 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Article Google Scholar Download references Acknowledgements This work was partially supported by US National Institutes of Health grants R01CA237267, R01EB032716 and R01EB031885. Author information Authors and Affiliations 1. Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, USA Joshua Goldwag 2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, Biomedical Imaging Center, Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA Ge Wang Authors 1. Joshua Goldwag View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar 2. Ge Wang View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Ge Wang. Ethics declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions About this article Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark Cite this article Goldwag, J., Wang, G. DishBrain plays Pong and promises more. Nat Mach Intell (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00666-w Download citation * Published: 01 June 2023 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00666-w Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. 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