What is a dishbrain?

When I was choosing art for my Discovering Biological Psychology, I was fascinated by this photo of a neuron growing on a silicon chip. As a Star Trek fan from way back, this photo made it seem like the fearsome Borg were just around the corner.

New research by Steve Potter and his colleagues at Georgia Tech seem even more like science fiction. This group of researchers have developed “dishbrains.” Okay, that sounds scary.

Here’s how it works. A few thousand rat neurons are grown in a dish. Their activity is associated with a computerized robot. One pattern of neural activity tells the computer to move a mouse icon in one direction. When the mouse hits a virtual wall, the computer relays a message back to the dishbrain.

The dishbrain was able to make the mouse avoid a moving target. That’s not all it can do. When attached to a robot arm holding pens, the dishbrain made art. Well, art is in the eye of the beholder……

Here’s what the robot looks like.

And here is the art….

And finally, to use the words of the Potter lab, here is the “semi living” artist. The next step for dishbrains? Potter and his colleagues want to see if the dishbrains can learn.

And after that? Who knows?