Scientists Close to Creating Human Embryos from Stem Cells
The “anything goes” ethical peril in biotechnology is all too realOnce again, biotechnology is racing ahead of our capacity to intellectually digest what is happening.
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Are the Brain Cells in a Dish That Learned Pong Conscious?
Human-derived organoids learned faster than AI and always outperformed mouse-derived organoids in terms of volley length, raising troubling questionsRecently, science media were abuzz with a remarkable story about minibrains (mouse and human brain cells in a dish) learning to play the video game Pong: Scientists have successfully taught a collection of human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game “Pong” — kind of. Researchers at the biotechnology startup Cortical Labs have created “mini-brains“ consisting of 800,000 to one million living human brain cells in a petri dish, New Scientist reports. The cells are placed on top of a microelectrode array that analyzes the neural activity. “We think it’s fair to call them cyborg brains,” Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs and research lead of the project, told New Scientist. Tony Tran, Read More ›