This $35,000 computer made of living human neurons can run Doom

Living brain cells are now playing Doom. Australian startup Cortical Labs has successfully demonstrated their CL1 computer system, which uses actual human neurons as its processing core, running the classic video game through electrical stimulation.

The commercial desktop unit houses genuine cortical brain cells, cultured from adult donor skin or blood cells, sitting in a sealed chamber with life support that keeps them viable for up to six months. Unlike artificial neural networks, these are real neurons responding to electrical signals through 59 precisely positioned electrodes.

The same researchers who taught 800,000 neurons to play Pong in 2022 have now engineered hardware that cuts response times to sub-millisecond speeds. Their custom operating system, biOS, sends reward and corrective signals to shape the neurons' behavior, forming adaptive pathways similar to biological learning.

Each $35,000 system represents what Cortical Labs calls "Synthetic Biological Intelligence," marking a boundary-crossing moment where living tissue becomes computational hardware. The company chose Doom partly because the 1993 game has become a universal benchmark for testing unconventional computing devices, from calculators to pregnancy tests.