Of Mice and Men

We always heard that an infinite number of monkeys typing away on typewriters for infinite amounts of time would inevitably reproduce "Hamlet." In fact, although most people claim that Shakespeare wrote the line "To sleep, perchance to dream," those words were actually spoken first by me when shaken out of a deep slumber in English 12. 

It was right after lunch, that's my story. 

But even now, we are finding that the animal kingdom is pretty darn smart. We are now in a position to grow mini brains from human and mouse neurons and teach those tiny brains to play Pong.

These are actual humans playing pong for illustrative purposes. The pong-playing mini brains wear red hats for easy identification. 

I know this is all being done in the holy name of Science, but researchers have formed a synthetic network of neurons and integrated the brain cells into an electrode array controlled by a computer program.

It's like, I get up in the morning and go feed the cat, because I have taught myself this simple skill by arranging what few brains cells I still own and operate. Same way, people in lab coats are hooking up these laboratory-made mini brains to a bunch of electrical conductors in such a way that they can learn simple tasks, just as I learned not to put too much kibble in the bowl and not to give Eddie more wet food than she needs. This means we know now that it's not just whole brains inside intact skulls that can learn stuff. 

Inside a little tiny box they call DishBrain, researchers placed row after row of imported electrodes, plus a caramel center. Once hooked up to computer software, this new noggin received electrical signals that spoke to certain parts of the neurons.  The first lesson taught DishBrain to play Pong, the first computer game from 1972 - the one where you move a paddle up and down to bat a "ball" back and forth right there on the screen. Then the computer sent information back to the neurons, telling them whether or not they had hit the imaginary ball.   

In less than five minutes, the neurons learned to alter the way the moved that paddle up and down so as to hit the ball more often. Science regards this as the first time a man-made biological neural network learned to complete a goal-oriented task all on its own. It was even written up in the journal "Neuron" last month. This is a big step forward for science and unemployed neurons, of which the world currently has a huge surplus.

That was a truly great day for science, although the afternoon was ruined for the crew in the laboratory. After lunch, they taught DishBrain how to play "Grand Theft Auto," and when 5 o'clock rolled around and the group knocked off for the day, they found all their cars were missing from the parking lot.