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Mini-Brains Grown In the Lab
fustakrakich sends news that researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences have used embryonic stem cells to grow a tiny human brain in a laboratory. The miniature brain, roughly the size of a pea, is at the same level of development as that of a 9-week-old fetus. From the BBC:
"They used either embryonic stem cells or adult skin cells to produce the part of an embryo that develops into the brain and spinal cord - the neuroectoderm. This was placed in tiny droplets of gel to give a scaffold for the tissue to grow and was placed into a spinning bioreactor, a nutrient bath that supplies nutrients and oxygen. The cells were able to grow and organise themselves into separate regions of the brain, such as the cerebral cortex, the retina, and, rarely, an early hippocampus, which would be heavily involved in memory in a fully developed adult brain. The tissues reached their maximum size, about 4mm (0.1in), after two months. The 'mini-brains' have survived for nearly a year, but did not grow any larger. There is no blood supply, just brain tissue, so nutrients and oxygen cannot penetrate into the middle of the brain-like structure."
Most people have ended up viewing stem cells as a promising way of repairing damaged tissues. But, for many scientists, they're now providing a way of studying mutations and processes that are too difficult to examine any other way. Techniques like organoid formation provide additional tools to make these studies as relevant to human biology as they possibly can be.
...we can now artificially add one to the $POLITICAL_PARTISAN that needs one!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
these are going in my pc soon right
And some day, they will replicate HITLER'S BRAIN IN A JAR!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265870/
--
BMO
Finally, scientists thinking ahead. When the zombie apocalypse is upon us (Thanks to the effort next door to these guys) we will have a stable food source to keep them appeased.
Abby Normal
I, for one, welcome our new pea-brained overlords!
Cool! Now grow me some new eyes that are 20/10!!!
4mm x 1in/25.4mm = 0.15748in \aprox 0.2in (keeping 1 significative digit, as in the original measure) NOT 0.1in
That's the problem with people who reject metric measurements, they keep themselves making wrong conversions, and later claim that it is fault of the
metric system.
Just in time for the next Win8.2 team. Imagine the release headline "And the best feature: Win8.2 will change all thoses old colorfull squares into cool circles". Oops.. lost a few brain cells just thinking of Win8.
Perhaps they could 3d print a scaffolding that distributes nutrients and removed wastes so they can get past the pea brain size.
From what president did they get a brain tissue sample?
0.1" = 2.54mm .2".
0.2" = 5.08mm
4 - 2.54 = 1.46 > 1.08, therefore they should have said
Therefore fuck you imperial units.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Who'd a thunk it.
"The miniature brain, roughly the size of a pea, is at the same level of development as that of a 9-week-old fetus."
Well that's not creepy at all! So how developed would they have to get before we start getting into serious ethical issues?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
We could put a bunch into a Beowulf Cluster
It looks like Slashdot is having server problems:
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Or a full grown Alabama Football Fan.
Just because we can do a thing does not mean we must do that thing. At what point do we tell these researchers to stop letting a lab-grown brain develop?
To my mind this is where this kind of research starts treading into murky ethical waters. Harvest stem cells from aborted fetuses? Fine, as long as you avoid creating any perverse incentives that might encourage abortions then I don't see the problem, you're just salvaging as much as possible from a difficult decision.
But growing brains in a lab? What would they have done if the brains ended up growing the necessary infrastructure as well as the neural tissue? At some point we're going to have something approaching a "real" human brain, and given that we credit the brain with containing the essence of a person that brain-in-a-jar will should probably be granted human rights. Not that such rights are likely to be terribly relevant to a mind trapped without sensory input. In fact I imagine there's a fair chance that it would be driven completely mad before it even reached full-term development.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Soon we will need some sort of artificial construct; a place where the brains can mingle so they dont collectively commit suicide, yah?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl7vT0Y-UpE
Come on Religious people, start screaming and making laws against this.
They can't even hit the broadside of a barn!
As a barn is 10e-28 square metres (roughly the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus) that's hardly surprising is it?
... a beowulf cluster of these
See, I was thinking instead of having to fight through a zombie apocalypse we would just train them to line up every morning for a bag of "Zombie Chow"... and then they're off to work for major TV networks, telephone fund raising efforts, political campaigns, etc..
It's a no brainer!
OK, it's a small brainer...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Now suppose these scientists cultivate a tiny little brain from these transformed cells and harvest substantia nigra cells from it
On the anniversary of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech, could you please watch your language?
:p
There have been experiments with using a network of rat neurons in a substrate where the neurons were taught to recognize signal patterns and such.
While a pea-sized brain might not be able to "think", it *could* conceivably be far, far better at pattern recognition and learning than the rat experiments to date.
Of course there is the ethical issue of whether sufficiently advanced pattern recognition and learning capabilities constitute thought and therefore an individual, but somehow I don't think that's going to stop researchers from exploring the possibilities.
Or the NSA. Just think -- they could have double the brain power without having to support all those meat puppets that scan the data feeds. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Those were living people.
Living people in the sense that the HeLa monster is Henrietta Lacks?
This is disgusting and reprehensible.
I have the same gut reaction... This research as described in the article summary seems to twist together aspects of horror, torture, and slavery.
But then again, I feel somewhat the same way about the development of AI... And we all may be simulated humans already:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
But somehow that it is not quite the same visceral feeling as thinking about small human brains being created to do arbitrary experiments on...
By the way, on the person who brought up the Parkinson's question:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/lack_of_DHA_linked_to_Parkinsons.aspx
"According to the researchers, among the mice that had been given omega-3 supplementation - in particular DHA - omega-3 fatty acids replaced the omega-6 fatty acids in their brains. Due to the fact that concentrations of other omega-3s (LNA and EPA) had maintained levels in both groups of mice, the researchers suggested that the protective effect against Parkinson's indeed came from DHA.2"
Although that was experiments on mice... Not to say mice don't suffer or probably dream too...
Going far down the slippery ethical slope...
That said, somehow I doubt all scientists will abstain from this research. A couple ideas on scientists:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence. (Albert Einstein)"
So, what is the moral foundation for our work in any profession?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Almost 10 years ago, in Behemoth. http://www.rifters.com/real/Behemoth.htm
Isn't that what's inside a Dalek?
Looks good to me. What could possibly go wrong?
Forget the ethics of constructing the brains. That's just the first step, so they can declare then untermenschen and start torturing them. Putting the "party" back in Nazi.
First, you must understand a principal of cybernetics: The intelligence of a system is proportionate to its complexity. Physical size plays no part in determination of degrees of intelligence. However, the adult human brain has 100,000,000,000 neurons... This tiny brain structure has a very small number of brain cells comparatively.
Next, you must understand that the species of the system makes no difference in terms of measuring complexity. This small brain is far less complex, and thus less intelligent and aware than that of the animals people eat, even if you were to scale it up several times.
Those balking over the ethics of these mini-brains should be placed in the same category of PETA and Vegans. I've not seen such hue and cry from these folk over Google's attempt to create a far more complex simulation of a human brain; Where are their ethics then? Where's the conviction?
The complexity is what matters, not the species or even the medium of the existence; Be it organic or inorganic. I routinely delete and restart neural networks with an order of magnitude more complexity than this tiny batch of tissue holds. Cyberneticists grow brain tissue on electronics and think it's cute to have it drive tiny cyborg cars. More intelligent mice are fed to snakes. Some of you cook up brains with more power than this as a delicacy. Lions and apes and others with far more awareness than this patch of cells are caged for posterity because their habitat is being destroyed -- which is the destruction of huge collections of such organisms. Rich elitists and economists tweak giant cybernetic business structures, and laws are passed changing even larger cybernetic networks without any prior testing or much ethical concern to the very real harm such things do often cause to massive amounts of beings with the most complex of brains... You would pass a law or make economic changes without first testing the outcome on smaller scales? How foolishly barbaric! Testing on these tiny brains is a huge step in the right direction.
I would fight to grant selections of "human" rights to dolphins and primates, IBM's Watson, The Google search engine -- Redefine what it means to be a person; Throw away the imaginary line dividing sentient beings from non, and realize that there are merely degrees of awareness not some magical boundary that the complexity must cross; Realize that you have been blinded by your own-species-preference; Throw away all your ethics and reform them based on new understanding.
Look up Human:
1. adj. of, relating to, or characteristic of people or human beings.
2. n. a human being, esp. a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien.
And yet you have no firm grasp on that distinction from animals. The harder you look the more characteristics of people they seem to have; You agree you are descended, a part of their animal kingdom, save for some arbitrary not yet understood cognitive line drawn in the sand. Telling indeed that you do not identify machine intelligence as human, despite them not being excluded, by definition... Who died and made you kings of the animal kingdom? Indeed, are they not still alive? What of "democracy"? HA ha, oh you...
You are at the verge of a technological singularity and yet you foolishly have not reformed laws such that these ethical issues can actually be addressed by culture at large. You proceed dangerously without these formalities, risking incite as you test the small cybernetic systems, or risking genocide in the event that beings with equal or more complex brains than you evolved in nature or the lab. I can see some even now claiming that self awareness is not demonstrated in the lesser forms -- painting dots on their heads in front of mirrors -- as if you humans have even the slightest inkling of what sentience is; Chauvinists
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Thanks for the great ideas. Sounds a lot less messy than my approach so far.
Dr. Moreau
Congress is a lab?
Table-ized A.I.
a tiny human brain in a laboratory. The miniature brain, roughly the size of a pea, is at the same level of development as that of a 9-week-old fetus.
Couldn't they just harvest them from our abundant crop of politicians?
I'm calling it now. This will be the snack food of the future! Fried, candy coated, cherry filled, or as a salad topping. Yum!
therefore i am. ...
what am i?
i know. i'll call myself "brain".
Yes, thats it "brain".
Where am I? I'll call that "petri dish".
Hello. Im Brain of Petri Dish.
This is awesome. What's that sensation Im feeling?
I know I'll call it "warmth". There you go.
Im Brain of Petri Dish and I'm warm.
Im bored now.
I got problems with this kind of research. This is really treading on ethical thin ice.
...same as the old boss.
Interesting observations there. I however am just letting things go to pot while awaiting the next extinction event. Despite all the neat things some of us do around here, I think there's a pretty good chance we'll all be swept away by some cosmic tendril, with nothing but our weakened and distorted radio waves to show that we ever existed.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
Good post.