Growing Human Neurons on a Home Made Electrode Array
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as an impressive garage-science example of neuron-computer interfaces and hard-science DIY biology.
What it is
The Thought Emporium builds a homemade multi-electrode array, grows human neurons on it and attempts to take readings. It is the first part of a series aimed at connecting living neurons to a computer.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Ftuuky · 2023-01 · on “Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal (recent) technology you have seen?”
Seeing a dude grow human neurons directly connected to a computer chip to make a "human AI", all from his garage [0]. It showed me what is possible with science these days if you have enough dedication and know-how. Made me feel deeply excited and scared for the incoming future. [0] [this video]
Recommends kevlened · 2023-06 · on “In Vitro Biological System of Cultured Brain Cells Has Learned To Play Pong”
If you're interested in exploring direct neuron + computer integration, Justin Atkin from The Thought Emporium is attempting to grow neurons on an electrode array. Here are two episodes that cover his work: Growing Human Neurons Connected to a Computer - [this video] Connecting Neurons to a Computer: The New Plan - [LINK]
Recommends mrtksn · 2023-07 · on “Growing Rat Neurons to Play Video Games [video]”
Interesting is understatement, it's a channel which is one of the closer ones to hard science on the hard science - pop science spectrum and still having more than a million subscribers. Some outstanding videos IMHO: The channel owner applies himself a gene therapy to fix his lactose intolerance. [LINK] How exactly the Covid Tests work: [LINK] Growing Human Neurons Connected to a Computer [this video] Especially the Covid test video was eye opening against the conspiracy theorist propaganda during the pandemic because knowing how tests actually work on practical level makes you see through the claims effort free.
Cites spyder · 2020-01 · on “A computer made from DNA can compute the square root of 900”
"Rat Neurons Grown On A Computer Chip Fly A Simulated Aircraft": [LINK] and a guy on YouTube trying to do it (not working yet): [this video]
Cites jcims · 2020-04 · on “A startup is building computer chips using real neurons”
> It's about at the level where you could make a good attempt to replicate it as a hobby in your (albeit well stocked) garage. Already being done: [this video] Doesn’t hurt to join forces with another ‘well stocked garage‘ featured earlier on HN: [this video]
Cites Isinlor · 2021-03 · on “Why Computers Won't Make Themselves Smarter”
Just yesterday [0] I also did an upper bound estimate on computing power of a human brain based on assumption that brains carry out irreversible computations. E.g. inputs of an AND gate can not be recovered from the gate output. This forces increase of entropy. This is known as Landauer's principle or Landauer's limit [1]. The Landauer's limit suggests that a brain consuming 20W at 36C can carry out no more than ~1e22 irreversible operations per second (20W / (309.2K * Boltzmann constant * ln(2))). That bounds brains at ~1e21 FLOP/s (~10 bits erased per FLOP). The best supercomputer right now does ~4e17 FLOP/s. That's log2(1e21 / 4e17) ~11 doublings of computing power until supercomputers wi
Cites panarchy · 2023-12 · on “'Biocomputer' combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware”
[LINK] Growing Living Rat Neurons To Play... DOOM? The Thought Emporium [this video] Growing Human Neurons Connected to a Computer The Thought Emporium
Cites skulk · 2025-05 · on “The CL1: the first code deployable biological computer”
The Thought Emporium, a YouTube channel, has some videos that demonstrate how something like this could be built: Growing Rat neurons to play DOOM (unfinished): part 1 -- [LINK] part 2 -- [LINK] Growing human neurons: [this video]