Researchers say they have successfully trained living human brain cells to play the classic video game Doom, marking the latest experiment in so-called “biological computing.”
Australian biotech company Cortical Labsannounced the developmentin a recent demonstration showing neurons grown in a laboratory interacting with the 1993 first-person shooter.
The experiment builds on earlier work from 2022, when the company revealed that clusters of human brain cells grown in a petri dish had learned to play the much simpler video game Pong.
Those early experiments involved “mini-brains” made up of roughly 800,000 to one million living human neurons.
According to the company, the cells demonstrated the ability to adapt and learn basic tasks in real time.
Scientists have trained 200,000 human brain cells grown on a microchip to “play” the original Doom
“If the neurons fire in a specific pattern, Doomguy shoots. If they fire in another pattern, he moves right, and so on”pic.twitter.com/rOZEY3uFKh
— Dexerto (@Dexerto)March 1, 2026
Now researchers say they have taken the technology further by teaching the neurons to interact with the far more complex environment of Doom, a three-dimensional game that requires movement, targeting, and exploration.
To make the system work, engineers translated the digital signals from the game into patterns of electrical stimulation that the neurons could interpret.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
