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Growing Human Neurons on a Home Made Electrode Array

The Thought Emporium

2.2M subscribers • 4 videos on Rounds

YouTube
  • Recommended by 3 people, in Hacker News, across 3 different months.
  • Presented by Justin Atkin, as the video describes them

Assumes interest and some biology. Education, not medical advice.

3.3M views6 years ago3 recommendations

Brain and nervesNeuroscienceCells and molecules

Justin Atkin demonstrates how to culture human neurons and connect them to a homemade multi-electrode array.

Neurons are amazing little microbes capable of learning and making decisions. Modern AI tries to take inspiration from living neurons, but why settle for the synthetic version? By growing human neurons directly connected to a computer it's possible to make a living AI of sorts capable of even complex tasks like flying a plane in a simulation. Today we explore our first attempt at doing exactly that. We cover building the first prototype multi electrode array, growing the neurons and attempting to take some readings from them. This is the first part of what will hopefully be a many part series, so stay tuned for updates! More reading/sources: Rat neuron video- youtube.com/watch?v=1w41gH6x_30 Rat neuron paper - philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Adaptive%20Flight%… Multi electrode array fabrication - iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0960-1317/23/9/097001/met… Previous videos: Meat berry - youtu.be/FaVHTd9Ne_s Magnetron build - youtu.be/Cyu7etM-0Ko Follow up videos: Meatcubator - youtu.be/Z_ZGq8Tah0k Meat Leaf - youtu.be/JNfQCRzcr3o Can Neurons Play Doom? - youtu.be/bEXefdbQDjw Gabes Stuff: scihouse.space/ instagram.com/glimsd/ instagram.com/scihousejax/ cbc.ca/news/health/biohacking-glybera-lipoprotein-lipase-def… ____________________________________________________________________ Support the show and future projects: Patreon: patreon.com/thethoughtemporium Nebula: go.nebula.tv/thethoughtemporium Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/thoughtemporium Become a member: youtube.com/channel/UCV5vCi3jPJdURZwAOO_FNfQ/join Store: thethoughtemporium.ca/ ______________________________________________________ Our Social Media Pages: Tiktok: tiktok.com/@thethoughtemporium Instagram: instagram.com/thethoughtemporium/ Facebook: facebook.com/thethoughtemporium/ Twitter: twitter.com/emporiumthought Website: thethoughtemporium.com/ _____________________________________________________

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a fascinating DIY biology project exploring the integration of living brain cells with computer hardware.

Ftuukyin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal (recent) technology you have seen?”

Seeing a dude grow human neurons directly connected to a computer chip to make a "human AI", all from his garage 0. It showed me what is possible with science these days if you have enough dedication and know-how. Made me feel deeply excited and scared for the incoming future. 0 link to this video
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kevlenedin Hacker News • Recommends

On “In Vitro Biological System of Cultured Brain Cells Has Learned To Play Pong”

If you're interested in exploring direct neuron + computer integration, Justin Atkin from The Thought Emporium is attempting to grow neurons on an electrode array. Here are two episodes that cover his work: Growing Human Neurons Connected to a Computer - link to this video Connecting Neurons to a Computer: The New Plan - link
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mrtksnin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Growing Rat Neurons to Play Video Games [video]”

Interesting is understatement, it's a channel which is one of the closer ones to hard science on the hard science - pop science spectrum and still having more than a million subscribers. Some outstanding videos IMHO: The channel owner applies himself a gene therapy to fix his lactose intolerance. link How exactly the Covid Tests work: link Growing Human Neurons Connected to a Computer link to this video Especially the Covid test video was eye opening against the conspiracy theorist propaganda during the pandemic because knowing how tests actually work on practical level makes you see through the claims effort free.
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spyderin Hacker News • Mentions

On “A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900”

"Rat Neurons Grown On A Computer Chip Fly A Simulated Aircraft": link and a guy on YouTube trying to do it (not working yet): link to this video
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jcimsin Hacker News • Mentions

On “A startup is building computer chips using real neurons”

> It's about at the level where you could make a good attempt to replicate it as a hobby in your (albeit well stocked) garage. Already being done: link to this video Doesn’t hurt to join forces with another ‘well stocked garage‘ featured earlier on HN: link to this video
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Isinlorin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why Computers Won't Make Themselves Smarter”

Just yesterday 0 I also did an upper bound estimate on computing power of a human brain based on assumption that brains carry out irreversible computations. E.g. inputs of an AND gate can not be recovered from the gate output. This forces increase of entropy. This is known as Landauer's principle or Landauer's limit 1. The Landauer's limit suggests that a brain consuming 20W at 36C can carry out no more than ~1e22 irreversible operations per second (20W / (309.2K * Boltzmann constant * ln(2))). That bounds brains at ~1e21 FLOP/s (~10 bits erased per FLOP). The best supercomputer right now does ~4e17 FLOP/s. That's log2(1e21 / 4e17) ~11 doublings of computing power until supercomputers wi…
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panarchyin Hacker News • Mentions

On “'Biocomputer' combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware”

link Growing Living Rat Neurons To Play... DOOM? The Thought Emporium link to this video Growing Human Neurons Connected to a Computer The Thought Emporium
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skulkin Hacker News • Mentions

On “The CL1: the first code deployable biological computer”

The Thought Emporium, a YouTube channel, has some videos that demonstrate how something like this could be built: Growing Rat neurons to play DOOM (unfinished): part 1 -- link part 2 -- link Growing human neurons: link to this video
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