Australian researchers teach brain cells to play 'Doom'

Dhaka, Bangladesh || Tuesday, 2 June 2026 || 19 Jyoishtho 1433

HEADLINE:

Ramisa rape-murder: Shafiqur urges lawyers not to defend accused Trump says Iran talks moving fast despite threat to widen war PM advises standing beside puddle instead of going abroad to learn mosquito eradication Remittance crosses $3b mark for sixth time Testimony begins in Ramisa rape and murder case ‘Not used to playing in such tricky conditions’ Australian researchers teach brain cells to play 'Doom'

Remittance crosses $3b mark for sixth time

Bangladesh received $3.42 billion in remittances in May, marking

Heartbreaking Letter from Dr. Samina Azam on Losing Her Father, Freedom Fighter Engineer Mosharraf Hossain

What I am writing is not meant to blame

Capital crime under fire as DMP tightens net

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has intensified a citywide

Social media is pushing children and adolescents toward ruin

Our children and adolescents are passing through a terrifying

Australian researchers teach brain cells to play 'Doom'

Published : Tuesday, 2 June, 2026 at 1:24 PM, Count : 34

Australian researchers teach brain cells to play 'Doom'

Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the nineties shooter "Doom" and say they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing.

It's the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain's networking system.

Each so-called "biological computer" contains around 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations.

Having mastered the simple computer game "Pong", where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball across a screen, the brain cells have moved on to bigger things.

Initially, the neurons were at the "level of a beginner who's never played a video game before," Alon Loeffler, Cortical Labs' senior application scientist, told AFP.

"Doom" involves a chaotic 3D game-world where the user is required to explore its surroundings and dispatch enemies -- no easy task for a clump of cells.

"They were walking into walls a lot, shooting the walls, turning around, doing funny things like that," Loeffler said.

"And then eventually they started targeting the enemies more regularly and correctly."

It's not the cleanest execution, however. One demon takes several attempts to slaughter, with shots fired in multiple directions before the target is hit.

But the mind-bending research proves the neurons can adapt to stimuli in real time and complete goal-directed learning, Cortical Labs say.

'Scratching the surface'

The researchers converted the digital environment in "Doom" into patterns of electrical signals the neurons on the chip could understand.

When an enemy appears, specific electrodes stimulate the neurons on the special chip called a CL1, causing them to react.

Different patterns of neuron activity produce specific responses, such as firing the gun or moving left or right.

Researchers monitor the electrical activity of the neurons from a computer screen connected to the CL1, represented by thousands of tiny dots.

From this data, the team adjusts their input to influence and train the neuron's activity.

« Previous