Human neurons playing Doom is real, but they are not “esports champion yet”
Cortical Labs has released a demo showing around 200,000 living human neurons playing Doom on its CL1 biological computing platform . The company linked the demo from its official research page and also published the source code on GitHub. Based on the public footage and accompanying material, the system can perform basic in-game actions, but it is still far from the level of a trained gaming bot or a competitive player.
The setup combines lab-grown neurons with a silicon interface that sends and receives electrical impulses in real time. Cortical Labs says the neurons grow across a chip and interact with a simulated environment through its software stack. In the public GitHub FAQ , the project author says the video used a zero-bias linear readout decoder, and that ablation tests with random or zero spikes produced no learning, which the team presents as evidence that the biological layer was contributing to the result.
Source: Cortical Labs
This is not the company’s first game experiment. Cortical Labs previously published work on neurons learning a Pong-like task, with the 2022 Neuron paper reporting apparent learning within minutes in a simulated game world. The move from Pong to Doom is a clear increase in complexity because the newer demo adds 3D navigation, aiming, and combat-related actions.
Source: Cortical Labs
The company markets CL1 as a code-deployable biological computer for research , says the device can keep neurons alive for up to six months, and points developers to its cloud platform, research page, and GitHub resources.
The scientist mentioned that the neurons are terrible in the game; they can shoot, move around, but they die a lot, much like a person who has never used a computer before. I guess it’s safe to say that anti-cheating systems should not be worried about lab-grown neurons pretending to be human players.
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