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."

Comments

Applications

[barlevg]

From arstechnica:

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.

Re:Applications

[toppavak]

Exactly, in my lab we work primarily on bone and colon tissue (although generated from adult stem or induced pluripotent stem cells). It would not be exaggerating to call these technologies the next generation of medical research. There are tons of genetic and developmental disorders that are either too rare to study readily in vivo or just impossible to study in-vitro. We're nearing the point where we can start with IPSC's either engineered to carry mutations of interest or derived directly from patients carrying these mutations and turn them into all sorts of tissues: liver, colon, neural, vascular, muscular, etc. In many cases it's not even necessary to get to the stage of organoids, simply having true human tissue with the right pathophysiology will be a tremendous boon to in-vitro drug screening and discovery and far more relevant than animal models.

With this pea-sized brain...

[TWX]

...we can now artificially add one to the $POLITICAL_PARTISAN that needs one!

Obligatory:

[bmo]

And some day, they will replicate HITLER'S BRAIN IN A JAR!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265870/

--
BMO

Re:Obligatory:

[margeman2k3]

But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, ooh, suddenly you've gone too far!

Zombie food?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Zombie food?

[PPH]

You can feed your zombies that farm raised stuff if you want. Nothing but the best free range brains for my zombies.

Welcome!

[krautcanman]

I, for one, welcome our new pea-brained overlords!

Re:Welcome!

[Greg01851]

Unfortunately, many of them already are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives

Oh good!

[Daetrin]

"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?

Re:Oh good!

[Russ1642]

You'll see protesters outside the lab with poorly worded signs by next Tuesday.

Re:Oh good!

[geekoid]

252 months.

Slashdot broken

[Animats]

It looks like Slashdot is having server problems:

---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [byline] block not found.

Ethical implications

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Ethical implications

[dublin]

This is a good reason *why* embryonic stem cell research is rightfully vilified. This isn't treading into ethically murky waters, it's heading out to sea in a supercharged Cigarette.

This is simply monstrous - in the most literal possible meaning of the word. I'm a tough enough guy, but I've only felt physically ill or repulsed as I did when reading TFAs a few other times, one of those was reading summaries of the Kermit Gosling trial. This is in some ways even worse, because there isn't even a grisly profit motive in play - it's just a flatly staggering disregard for humanity and ethical norms in the name of "science"...

Re:Ethical implications

[Ardyvee]

I doubt it would be driven mad. For all intents and porposes, since it would not be exposed to the five senses, nor human culture, it'd be as close as to a raw brain and effectively mad to begin with. To better illustrate my point, imagine a realistic and more extremist version of Disney's Tarzan.

Now, you do touch a very interesting point. So far it is believed by a subset of the global population that we are our brains (another subset believes that we are something beyond our brains, but that's another debate). Assuming such brain developed to the size/complexity of that of a child and had the structures and what not, we would have to assume we are in fact dealing with a... bodyless? human. Chances are whatever research was on-going would have to be stopped under current rules (since it would go from cells to full grown human). Any wishes to proceed with research would also require that we ask the brain if they want to participate (and we would have to teach the brain to speak, understand what we are asking and tell the brain that it is only brain grown for the sole porpouse of advancing science and that it does not have a body). Then if it denies the request, somebody would have to take care of the brain because of the ethical implications of letting it die.

On the other hand, humanity (those with bodies and part of our societies[probably need a better criteria]) could choose to treat such brains differently. But then we'll hear that we are de-humanizing humans. On the other hand this could be the catalyst to a lot of breakthroughs in the field of neuroscience (and related fields). Being capable of studying, stripping, adding, modifying a human brain, even if it is the equivalent of a 9-week-old fetus' brain, will allow to reach further than what we can right now with any other method. Of course, we do have mice brains, and they also have proved to be very valuable, but... say, instead of going from theories to animals to people, we could go to theories to animals to human brain to people.

One thing is for certain in all this: whoever has to make the decision will have it hard, either on making the decision, or with the many sides this issue will have. I would not want to be that person.

As an aside, one thing that would be very interesting to try, although perhaps cruel, would be to have a conscious, intelligent, communication capable and socially integrated brain (that is, think of a person that's lived in our society, studied... lived outside of a lab) and try to plug different things into the brain, try separating some regions, try adding them together, try adding more cells and see the effects it has on the very capabilities of the brain, and what it experiences. Does it/the brain feel something different when you do it, or does it simply loose the capabilities and only notices when compared to previous experiences? What about adding things? I think it would be a very interesting experiment to do. Go beyond what we can learn from people who suffered accidents.

Re:Ethical implications

[camperdave]

no stimulus no learning no toughs no feeling

On th other hand, "I think therefore I am."

Re: Ethical implications

[UnknownSoldier]

Science by _definition_ is amoral.

Only scienctists have the obligation to not only ask "_Can_ we do this?" but also "_Should_ we do this?"

Re:Ethical implications

[gregor-e]

Suppose someone you love has Parkinson's. Now imagine these scientists have extracted cells from your loved one, and, through genetic engineering, repaired the genetic flaw that caused your loved one to lose their substantia nigra. Now suppose these scientists cultivate a tiny little brain from these transformed cells and harvest substantia nigra cells from it, which they transplant into your loved one's brain, thus curing their Parkinson's. Would you feel any better about it then?

Re:Ethical implications

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense but I think this might be outside your area of expertise? I've been reading and following various forms of AI and neuron development for a few years now and this didn't cause much of an eye blink. There's no reason to suggest, and plenty of science to raise doubt, there is any form of consciousness appearing or reacting in this circumstance.

  There's growing evidence to suggest consciousness emerges through the complex neuronal communication over many years of life, such that most 4 years olds are considered to have limited consciousness.

Re: Ethical implications

[Culture20]

And proof of consciousness is what again?

Not sure if I'm answering your question... but anyway: a test of (self) consciousness is recognizing oneself in a mirror as such. They test it by painting a cross on the forehead (and a control group with an invisible cross) and holding a mirror. Humans, hominid apes, elephants, whales/dolphins-family and magpies (and perhaps some very smart pigs, but evidence is inconclusive) pass this test: they reach out for the cross on their own head, rather than for the mirror, or they try to shrub it off their forehead in other ways.

Of course, a brain in a jar cannot pass this test.

Nor can a blind man. Does consciousness rely on one sense or any sensation at all? Does it rely on mental word constructs or is it independent, merely making use of available patterns?

Re:Ethical implications

[Derec01]

If anything that makes the issue far *more* problematic. If a one year old has "no consciousness to speak of", we have two options. Grant only subhuman rights to infants, or accept that human rights and right to life is not contingent only on consciousness .

Now, we've damaged the argument that these mini-brains are morally safe because they have no consciousness.

This made me feel very uneasy. These brains are probably equivalent to miscarriaged fetuses, but what if we grew them a little large? Started feeding them electrical signals from the outside? Accepted electrical signals they provided into a feedback loop that sent more complicated signals back? We've now introduced them to *an* outside world if not *our* outside world. When does that consciousness start?

Re:Ethical implications

[Immerman]

Not in the slightest. In fact it makes it hilights exactly why this is such an ethical quandary. Let me slightly rephrase your scenario:
Suppose scientists create a (genetically repaired) delayed identical twin (aka clone) of your ill loved one, then kill the clone to harvest some portions/cells from its brain in order to repair your loved one's brain.

Does it really change anything substantially if for convenience they only clone the brain? For other organs sure, kinda hard to talk about a cloned heart or kidney having rights - but we are presuming that the brain is the seat of consciousness, so by cloning a new brain we are presumed to create a new person. And by killing it we should be presumed to be committing murder.

Granted in this particular case the brainlet is unlikely to have developed anything remotely resembling full human consciousness, but it's a step down a shaky moral road without any clearly lined boundaries. Yes the Slippery Slope is a logical fallacy, but it's also true that each step you take down a questionable path such as this tends to make the next step just a little easier to accept.

Re:Ethical implications

[i kan reed]

We do grant subhuman rights to all minors, with a gradual approach to full rights as they grow up. That isn't a hypothetical.

Re:Who's the donor?

[dkleinsc]

Actually, they got it from someone named Abby Normal.

Re:Ethics

[MightyMartian]

You know, at some point, whether you like it or not, we will probably be making organic computers I've some kind or another that are, for all intents and purposes, grown brains. Creepy, perhaps, but inevitable.

Re:Ethics

[Zeromous]

Yeah, I'm not sure at what transformation point humanity as a whole will need to adjust its view on some ethical positions, in order to survive/thrive. But, I sense that 'about now' or 'soon' is possibly one of those times. I'm just a peon along for the ride.

Re: conversion

[ceoyoyo]

The English singular of data is datum as well (which isn't any kind of coincidence because English steals). But you sound like a dork saying it, so you rarely hear it except from professors who are past retirement age.

Zombie Applications

[FatdogHaiku]

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...

Re:Ethical implications and gut reaction

[Paul Fernhout]

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?