Closer to a sci-fi scenario with lab-grown brain

The latest invention by scientists from Tianjin University and the Southern University of Science and Technology, namely a robot controlled by a lab-grown artificial brain, is a significant breakthrough.

While making a "brain" from stem cells — often referred to as brain organoid, which is quite different from a real human brain — is not rare, how to enable it to receive orders, and/or even control machines like the antagonist boss Krang in Ninja Turtles did, remains a challenge. The process looks easy, but it involves decoding the brain, converting its thought process into electrical signals, and then sending the signals to the machine in order to control it.

Further, there has to be a channel for the brain to receive feedback from the robotic arms it is supposed to control. The aforementioned research team has trained the "brain" for robot obstacle avoidance, tracking, grasping and other tasks, and completed the inspiration work of various kinds of brain computing.

While the bidirectional movement of brain signals with external machines is a progress, what's more significant is the team's discovery that low-intensity focused ultrasound can significantly promote the proliferation of neural progenitor cells and the differentiation of neurons, increase the thickness of the cortical plate, make its stratification clear, promote the maturation of synaptic structure and function, and ultimately form a three-dimensional neural network with high complexity and storage computing capabilities. Put more simply, the cultivation of the brain organoid has improved, enhancing the hope of any such organoid growing into a real brain in the future, thus opening the door wider toward the sci-fi scenario of artificial brains controlling machine bodies. Unlike in the animation described above, they won't be used by Krang, but by doctors to help paralysis patients stand up again.