Mice Created With Human Brain Cells

pin_gween writes "Scientists have added 100,000 human brain cells to mice in an effort to create realistic models of disorders like Parkinson's Disease. Although mice are 97.5 percent genetically identical to humans and it sounds like a large number, 100,000 only represents 0.1% of the number of cells in mice brains. FTA: 'It's true that there is a huge amount of similarity, but the differences are huge,' Snyder said. 'You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body. [...] Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the "yuck factor." 'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

Comments

The conscious neuron?

[jtangen]

Remind me what's so unique about human neurons that cause people to fear that mice will somehow become conscious, thinking organisms?

brain simulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

If 100.000 brain cells is 0.1% then a mouse has 100.000.000 brain cells. How many bytes does it take to describe a brain cell? How many connections are there from a single brain cell to other brain cells? Say it takes 4 bytes to address the connections. Then 10 connections per cell make 4GByte in total. Who is going to write the software to simulate a mouse?

Re:brain simulation?

[penguinoid]

Neurons have several thousand connections, not "about 10". Furthermore, these connections are analog (have a range of strengths), say 1 byte to address the strenghts. Given about 100,000,000 brain cells, you would need almost 30 bits per connection as well, but call it 3 bytes. At 1000 connections, you need 4 kb per neuron, or 400 Gb of memory for 1 rat brain. Barely doable, but the processor power to handle all of that will not be easy to find...

Re:well i think

[PakProtector]

"'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

Yes, certain boundaries. F#%$# you. Using other animals to experiences already is "certain boundaries".

At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority".

Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.

We humans aren't so special after all.