Brain Cells In A Dish Play Pong And Other Brain Adventures

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

The world of brain research had two incredible developments last week. Researchers have taught a dish of brain cells to play the video game Pong to help develop more intelligent AI. Separately, scientists transplanted human brain organoids into a living animal with the hope of using them as models of human disease. Jon Hamilton talks with host Aaron Scott about this research and its implications.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Halloween season is upon us, Shortwaveers, and you know what that means.
0:11.2	Brains!
0:15.2	Human brains that can live on their own or bring monsters to life.
0:21.2	Oh, my perfectest brain!
0:26.4	Her brain kept alive by experimental science by brains.
0:32.3	Brains!
0:39.1	But I digress, we are a science show and this is the stuff of science.
0:43.8	Fiction?
0:44.8	I mean, you can't really bond a human brain to another animal, and certainly it's not like
0:49.4	there are brains out there in a petri dish somewhere sitting around playing video games.
0:54.7	Okay, so Aaron, about that.
0:57.8	Oh hi John Hamilton, NPR brain expert.
1:01.1	Yeah, hi.
1:02.1	I should just say it's not science fiction anymore.
1:04.8	Go on.
1:06.0	I mean, just last week I was looking at these two pretty amazing studies about how clusters
1:12.1	of living brain cells are doing things that totally sound like sci-fi.
1:15.7	Oh, so Halloween dreams do come true.
1:19.4	Apparently, I mean, do you want to start with the study about the thing that sounds super
1:22.7	creepy or the one that involves a video game from the 1970s?
1:26.5	I want to save the creepy for last, so let's start with the 70s video game.
	...

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