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THE warrior dashes through one dark corridor after another, as laser shots crackle past his body. He crouches, jumps, swivels… does he detect the source? He fires at a potential enemy, barely visible in the shadows, then decides to flee.

Though the character inhabits the first-person shoot ‘em up video game,Unreal Tournament, there’s no human player in the driving seat. This warrior, called Neurobot, is a character controlled entirely by a biologically inspired model of consciousness. The feat could help us to build more human-like machines, and even shed light on the workings of consciousness itself, one of the biggest mysteries in science.

The thrilling run I watched was just a practice, but next week the neuroscience-inspired warrior will compete in the fight of his life: the annualBotPrize contest. It is a video-game alternative …

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This is a preview of the full article