Melbourne, Australia – August 12, 2025 – Researchers have demonstrated that brain cells perform more complex networking than machine learning by comparing the way both synthetic biological intelligence (SBI) systems known as “dish brain” and cutting-edge RL (reinforced learning) systems respond to specific stimuli.
This study, “Plasticity of Dynamic Networks and Sample Efficiency in Biological Neurological Cultures: A Comparative Study with Deep Reinforcement Learning,” is the first known of its species.
The research was led by the Cortical Institute, a Melbourne-based startup that created CL1, the world's first commercial biological computer. The researched CL1 fuses lab cultured neurons from human stem cells to create a more sophisticated and sustainable form of AI known as “synthetic biological intelligence” (SBI).
This study investigated the integration of complex network dynamics of the raw in vitro nervous system with high density multi-electrode arrays in real-time closed-loop gaming environments. By embedding spike activity in a low-dimensional space, this study distinguishes between “rest” and “gameplay” conditions and reveals underlying patterns important for real-time monitoring and manipulation.
The analysis highlights dynamic changes in connectivity during gameplay and highlights the highly sample-efficient plasticity of these networks in response to stimuli. To investigate whether this makes sense in a broader context, researchers compared the learning efficiency of these biological systems with state-of-the-art deep RL algorithms such as DQN, A2C, and PPO in Pon Simulation.
In doing so, researchers can introduce meaningful comparisons between biological nervous systems and deep RL, and when samples are limited to actual time courses, even these very simple biological cultures outperform deep RL algorithms across various gaming performance characteristics, meaning higher sample efficiency.
The study was led by the Cortical Institute in collaboration with the Institute of Brain and Mental Health at Monash University in Clayton, Australia. IITB-Monash Research Academy, Mumbai, India. University College London, UK Welcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging.
Brett Kagan, Chief Science Officer of the Cortical Institute, commented: “While substantial advances have been made throughout the field of AI in recent years, we believe that actual intelligence is not artificial. We believe that actual intelligence is biological. Ultimately, behavior is a central goal of neuroscience research. This paper is an important and exciting step in that journey.
“This breakthrough was important evidence that led to the final creation of CL1, the world's first biological computer. It accesses these properties. However, this is not the end, and we believe that further research in Bioengineering Intelligence (BI) will unlock capabilities that far exceed those previously shown.”
Based on the original breakthrough and the launch of CL1, Cortical Lab released a second paper – “Two roads branched out: A pathway to harness the intelligence of neuronal culture” – proposes a new approach to generating intelligent devices called bioengineering intelligence (BI).
Interest in using in vitro neuronal cultures embodied within a structured information landscape has grown rapidly. Whether it's biomedical, basic science, information processing and intelligence applications, these systems have great potential. Currently, coordinated efforts have established the field of organoid intelligence (OI) as one pathway.
However, it could potentially lead to another path, particularly by leveraging engineering neural circuits. The research paper examines opportunities and general challenges of OI and BI, and proposes a framework for conceptualizing these different approaches using in vitro neuronal cultures for information processing and intelligence.
In doing so, BI has been formalized as a clear, innovative pathway that can proceed in parallel with OI. Ultimately, important advances can be achieved in either pathway, but the juxtaposition of results from each method is proposed to maximize progress in the most exciting yet ethically sustainable direction.
“Our goal was to go beyond anecdote demonstrations of biological learning to provide rigorous and quantitative evidence that living neural networks exhibit rapid and adaptive reorganization in response to stimuli. “While artificial agents often require millions of training steps to demonstrate improvement, these neural cultures adapt much faster and reorganize activity in response to feedback. By analyzing how their electrical signals evolve over time, we found clear patterns that reflect the key principles of actual brain function and demonstrate the potential of biological systems.”
Moein Khajehnejad of the Cortical Institute added: “Transforming high-dimensional spike activity into interpretable and low-dimensional representations has been able to reveal internal plasticity and network reconstruction patterns associated with learning in biological culture.
“What makes this research truly groundbreaking is the establishment of a head-to-head benchmark between synthetic biological systems and deep RL under comparable sampling constraints. If learning opportunities are limited, and if the animals and humans are closer to the way they actually learn, these biological systems adapt faster, are more efficient, robust and robust.
Cortical Institute Support:
“This study strengthens the case of bioengineering intelligence as a powerful and adaptable substrate for calculation. Bioengineering intelligence allows us to reconstruct our mindset and mindset mindset. – Adir Raj, Institute of Brain and Mental Health, Clayton, Clayton, Australia.
Professor Milera Dotzuri, director of the University of Wollongong, Department of Stem Cell and Neural Modeling Lab, Medical, Indigenous and Health Sciences, said, “The research research in the Cortical Laboratory is moving forward with a new frontier for new neuroscience. CL1 technology sets a much-needed platform for neuroscience research to understand brain function.
Hideaki Yamamoto, an associate professor at the Telecommunications Institute at Tohoku University, commented: It is very impressive that they developed CL1 and commercialized it in such a short time. ”
/Public release. This material of the Organization of Origin/Author is a point-in-time nature and may be edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.news does not take any institutional position or aspect, and all views, positions and conclusions expressed here are the views of the authors alone.
