This Computer Is Alive and It Needs to Be Fed Every Day
wrap your head around (something): to understand something that is complicated or hard to believe
Most computers run on electricity. But a company in Australia has built something very different: a computer that runs on living human brain cells.
Cortical Labs, a startup based in Melbourne, grows tiny clusters of brain cells in a lab. Scientists call these clusters organoids. They are not full brains. They are small groups of around 200,000 neurons, grown from human cells. But they can learn.
In 2022, the company taught these brain cells to play Pong, the simple video game from the 1970s. The cells learned to move the paddle and hit the ball. More recently, they learned to play a game that requires moving through 3D spaces and fighting enemies.
Each unit sits in cerebrospinal fluid, the same liquid that surrounds and protects your brain inside your skull. The problem is that the cells use up the oxygen and nutrients in the fluid every day. So every 24 hours, staff must replace it with fresh fluid.
It is hard to wrap your head around the idea that people go to work each morning and feed a computer. But that is exactly what happens. Technicians also keep the room at very low oxygen levels, about one quarter of normal air, to match the conditions inside a human body.
Cortical Labs is now building a data center in Singapore with up to 1,000 of these machines. Each one uses less power than a handheld calculator.
The question nobody has fully answered yet is a simple one: if a computer is made of human brain cells, is it merely a machine?
Sample sentences
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that she quit her job and moved to another country in the same week.
A: Did you understand the new tax rules? B: Not really. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around them all morning.
He showed me how the machine works three times, but I still can’t wrap my head around it.
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Staff at New Data Center Powered by Human Brain Cells Need to Swap Out Cerebrospinal Fluid Every Day