Hundreds of thousands of human neurons growing in a dish coated with electrodes have been taught to play a version of the classic computer game Pong.“They’re not thought about as an information processor, but a neuron is this amazing system that can process information in real time with very low power consumption.”Although the company calls its system DishBrain, the neurons are a far cry from an actual brain, Kagan says, and show no signs of consciousness.Cortical Labs’ work follows on work by neuroengineer Steve Potter, now at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and his colleagues.Not just a gameThe work is an important step towards developing assays that could be used, for example, to test the potential effect of a new drug on neuronal function, says neuroscientist Takuya Isomura at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Saitama, Japan.And the techniques developed for DishBrain are quantitative enough that they could be used to compare variations in learning between different animals, or between cells from multiple regions of the brain, says Potter."