The living machine was created by scientists at FinalSpark, a company specializing in solutions based on biological neural networks. Dr. Fred Jordan, co-CEO of FinalSpark, stated to DailyMail," This idea is common in science fiction, but there isn’t a huge amount of real research on it." Organoids are small, self-organizing three-dimensional tissue cultures created from stem cells. These cultures can be engineered to mimic much of the complexity of an organ or to express specific aspects of the organ, such as producing only certain types of cells. Scientists take stem cells and cultivate them for approximately a month until they develop features like neurons. The mini-brains created by FinalSpark were constructed from an estimated 10,000 living neurons, each approximately 0.5mm in diameter.
The organoids are trained using doses of dopamine. When they perform tasks correctly, they receive a stream of this chemical as a reward. Scientists administer dopamine by shining light on a specific area of the brain organoid, similar to how it is released in the human brain when a specific region is activated.
The mini-brains are surrounded by eight electrodes that measure activity in the organoids. Researchers can send current through these electrodes to influence the neurons.