Lab-Grown Brains Growing More Powerful
March 1st, 2026Via: Futurism:
In a remarkable breakthrough published in the journal Cell Reports, researchers were able to effectively coach lab-grown brains into solving the “cart-pole” problem. The cart-pole problem is an engineering benchmark used in robotics, artificial intelligence — and now cognitive science — to measure how effective systems are at processing information.
The test basically involves balancing a broomstick upright on your palm. Gravity forces you to constantly adjust your position — move too much or not enough, and the broom falls. Every human needs to solve this problem in order to stand and walk upright. Luckily for us, we have our animal instincts (and more importantly, our inner ears) to guide us through; brain organoids have no such advantage.
Yet by coaxing their mini-brains with electrical signals guided by a reinforcement learning algorithm, the UCSC researchers were able to “coach” the organoids from a cart-pole “win” rate of just 4.5 percent to a whopping 46 percent.
“You could think of it like an artificial coach that says, ‘you’re doing it wrong, tweak it a little bit in this way,’” Ash Robbins, the study’s lead author said in a press release. “We’re learning how to best give it these coaching signals.”
In essence, their success proves that brain organoids are capable of goal-directed learning, similar to the kind of trial-and-error a toddler goes through as they learn to walk.
Related: A Petri Dish Of Human Brain Neurons Just Learned How To Play Doom
