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Growing Living Rat Neurons To Play... DOOM? | Part 1

The Thought Emporium3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2023–2026
YouTube
demo · general · 2023–2026 on HN

The Thought Emporium grows living rat neurons on an electrode array and tries to train them to play Doom. It is part of a series on biological computing.

Cited whenever biocomputing or neurons-on-chip come up, as an accessible example of how such a system can be built.

11 comments from Hacker News

@chneu2025-06 · in “Human Brain Cells on Chip for Sale – First biocomputing platform hits the market”

The YouTuber "The Thought Emporium" has been working on a similar project for a few years. ▶ this video They run an amazing channel that covers a variety of topics. Highly recommend. The mummification video is fun.

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@fenykep2026-03 · in “Living Human Brain Cells Play Doom on a CL1”

I think the Thought Emporium youtube channel has some explanatory [videos]( ▶ this video ) of the whole process. I couldn't wrap my head around the thing tho.

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@zonkerdonker2024-05 · in “First Bioprocessor Powered by Human Brain Organoids”

Anyone ineterested in more wetware projects should check out the series from The Thought Emporium on youtube: ▶ this video They are attempting to train a (literal) neural network to play DOOM. And yes, it os as fascinating and horrifying as it sounds. It's hard not to extrapolate 50 years down the line with this tech. Stuff gets complicated quick. How many human neurons do you have to use before you get an actual human consiousness?

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@preisschild2025-07 · in “I don't think AGI is right around the corner”

> Maybe our first AGI is just a Petri dish brain with a half-decent python API This reminds me of The Thought Emporium's project of teaching rat brain cells to play doom ▶ this video

@skulk2025-05 · in “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 -- ▶ this video part 2 -- link Growing human neurons: link