Biological Computing: Why Did We Teach Human Brain Cells to Play Doom?

There is a long-running joke in computing.

If a piece of hardware contains anything resembling a processor and a display, somebody will eventually try to make it run *Doom*.

The 1993 game has appeared on calculators, cameras, printers, smartwatches and countless other devices that were never designed to play it. Getting “Doom” running on inappropriate hardware has become less a technical achievement than a computing tradition.

So perhaps it was inevitable that somebody would eventually connect “Doom” to a biological computer.

Except this time the inappropriate hardware contains human neurons.

And somehow that makes the joke feel rather different.

Of Course It Was Doom

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for choosing “Doom”.

It is instantly recognisable, relatively simple by modern gaming standards and deeply embedded in computing culture. Making something run “Doom” has become shorthand for demonstrating that a new or unusual platform can actually do something.

Cortical Labs had already demonstrated cultured neurons interacting with “Pong” through its earlier DishBrain research. That made intuitive sense as an…