Australian scientists at Cortical Labs have successfully trained lab-grown human brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s video game Doom [1, 2]. Each biological computer contains around 200,000 living brain cells grown from stem cells harvested from blood donations [1, 2].
The researchers first trained the neurons to play the simpler game Pong and have now advanced to the more complex Doom, which requires navigation and targeting [1]. Initially, the neurons performed poorly in Doom, often walking into walls and shooting randomly. "Initially, the neurons were at the level of a beginner who’s never played a video game before," said Alon Loeffler, Cortical Labs senior application scientist. He added that "They were walking into walls a lot, shooting the walls, turning around, doing funny things like that. And then eventually they started targeting the enemies more regularly and correctly" [1].
The digital environment of Doom was translated into electrical patterns that stimulated the neurons on a custom chip called CL1 [1]. This chip supports communication between the biological neurons and the digital signals needed to play the game. Beyond gaming, the CL1 has broader potential applications including drug screening and AI-like machine learning models [1].
Brett Kagan, Cortical Labs’ chief scientific and operations officer, said the team is "just scratching the surface of what these neural cultures can achieve when integrated in systems like our CL1" [1].
The report on the training of these lab-grown brain cells to play Doom was published on May 31, 2026 [2]. Researchers are expected to continue refining the system to explore further uses of biological computing.