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Scientists Grow 'Mini-Brain On the Move' That Can Contract Muscle (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have grown a miniature brain in a dish with a spinal cord and muscles attached, an advance that promises to accelerate the study of conditions such as motor neurone disease. The lentil-sized grey blob of human brain cells were seen to spontaneously send out tendril-like connections to link up with the spinal cord and muscle tissue, which was taken from a mouse. The muscles were then seen to visibly contract under the control of the so-called brain organoid. The research is is the latest in a series of increasingly sophisticated approximations of the human brain grown in the laboratory -- this time with something approaching a central nervous system attached.
The scientists used a new method to grow the miniature brain from human stem cells, which allowed the organoid to reach a more sophisticated stage of development than previous experiments. The latest blob shows similarities, in terms of the variety of neurons and their organisation, to the human foetal brain at 12-16 weeks of pregnancy. However, the scientists said the structure was still too small and primitive to have anything approaching thoughts, feelings or consciousness. While a fully developed human brain has 80-90 billion neurons, the organoid has a couple of million, placing it somewhere between a cockroach and a zebrafish in terms of volume of grey matter. After growing the organoid, the scientists "used a tiny vibrating blade to cut it into half millimeter-thick slices which were placed on a membrane, floating on a nutrient-rich liquid," reports The Guardian. "This meant the entire slice had access to energy and oxygen and it continued developing and forming new connections when it was kept in culture for a year. Alongside the organoid, the scientists added in a 1mm-long spinal cord, taken from a mouse embryo, and the surrounding back muscle. The brain cells automatically began to send out neuronal connections, linked up with the spinal cord and began sending electrical impulses, which caused the muscles to twitch."
The study has been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The scientists used a new method to grow the miniature brain from human stem cells, which allowed the organoid to reach a more sophisticated stage of development than previous experiments. The latest blob shows similarities, in terms of the variety of neurons and their organisation, to the human foetal brain at 12-16 weeks of pregnancy. However, the scientists said the structure was still too small and primitive to have anything approaching thoughts, feelings or consciousness. While a fully developed human brain has 80-90 billion neurons, the organoid has a couple of million, placing it somewhere between a cockroach and a zebrafish in terms of volume of grey matter. After growing the organoid, the scientists "used a tiny vibrating blade to cut it into half millimeter-thick slices which were placed on a membrane, floating on a nutrient-rich liquid," reports The Guardian. "This meant the entire slice had access to energy and oxygen and it continued developing and forming new connections when it was kept in culture for a year. Alongside the organoid, the scientists added in a 1mm-long spinal cord, taken from a mouse embryo, and the surrounding back muscle. The brain cells automatically began to send out neuronal connections, linked up with the spinal cord and began sending electrical impulses, which caused the muscles to twitch."
The study has been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
This filled me more with terror than awe. Guess it's time to start yelling at clouds.
I just hope they don't accidently create a face hugger ala Aliens, or some other malicous organism.
They're making some huge assumptions that it can't think and therefore justify to themselves and us that it's okay for them to slice and dice and torture this being they have created... They should at least have the guts to say "yeah we're being horrific but we're learning a lot".
Sick cowards :-(
.... multi-core organisms? Why don't we just drink coffee and overclock the ones we have?
Consider that despite being a moron he still crushed Hillary in the election, best economy in modern times, knocked the Chinese off kilter, did not give billions of dollars to a terrorist state, say there are 57 states or refer to his tranny wife as Michael multiple times during interviews and speeches.
I did not vote for him but compared to the alternative and previous office holders he is doing ok in my book.
Sure but how many neurons are required for self awareness? We truly have no fucking clue. It could be a few hundred thousand in which case we have created life in a dish so we can torture it. (My degree is in neuroanatomy. We really dont know a whole lot.)
The whole thing makes me feel vaguely ill.
Hey Slashdot,
Do us all a favor, instill a way to curb these chuckleheads who have nothing on their mind but posting pathetic political figure jokes, over the likes of Trump or anyone else for that matter, to an unrelated story such as this. It's a real turn off to even want to get involved in any discussion here. Talk about mini brains.
Seriously you guys need to get a life. Only you care about Trump.
Never have I seen such a mental obsession over someone go so far.
Against him, losing by 0.01% is sill utter humiliation.
But you can keep the "popular vote" participation medal.
Now that is a powerful combination ! I wish more humans were like that, "loaded with both".
Still I would not like to have to chase after that thing when the brain will figure out that the experiment will be finished and command the muscle to jump out of the dish.
Obviously they watch Rick and Morty too. I doubt they where able to turn themselves in to pickles though.
I'm not rich and my taxes are dramatically less.
In fact, it was a tax increase on the rich. Not allowing you champaign socialists to keep bilking the rest of America with local and state tax write-offs was brilliant, and obviously the real reason you're angry.
Sorry. We won't subsidize your outrageous tax schemes anymore. Welcome to reality.
Now think of how early in pregnancy a human fetus would have that stage of brain development. Kind of illuminates the abortion debate in a whole new way, doesn't it.
... to Saturn 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
The scientists are being duplicitous in order to be able to continue their research.
Of course they are, they're trying to cure motor neuron disease! Ethical constraints could really throw a monkey wrench in their plans to develop a cure for a debilitating group of disorders; they're beating around the bush for a damn good reason. At least they're growing a brain in a lab rather than cutting apart living human volunteers. This isn't the kind of biological research that can be performed on cadavers, after all.
Also, consider this: Yes, the brain they grew *MIGHT* have feelings. However, we already know that people afflicted with motor neuron diseases *DO* have feelings. By my measurement, I've got a lot more shits to give about a person with ALS than a quivering grey blob in a petri dish by comparison.
So far, I don't see comments about using this as part of artificial intelligence system. The connection to muscles would be the output path. The researchers should work on connecting a "retina" so that we'd have (admittedly small) computer
So that's how Mother Brain gets born. Someone call Samus Aran, NOW!
#DeleteFacebook
reminds me a lot of bad '50's sci-fi flicks. 'The Brain That Wouldn't Die' comes to mind.Hum, that one was '62, eh, close enough.
+1 Informative.
47% is "crushed" lol?
Yeah, according to the rules of the game they were playing. Not my fault Queen Hillary and her fans are too stupid to even not bring a basketball to a game of football.
The formula involves dividing by the number of electoral votes to gauge the relative value of any particular voter. Some votes are worth more than others due to population differences. It's too bad math is too hard for liberals or this whole thing could be explained to them, but as it is, we're stuck with ignorant people whining about the same thing forever. LOL
Just because these scientists lack ethics doesn't mean they have cockroach brains
But I sympathize with your comparison
That term just hits my funny bone for some odd reason. That'd be an awesome name for a monster from a sci-fi horror movie, sounds a little better than just, "The Thing" I suppose.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
A pregnant woman knows how developed the thing inside her is, and it's her right to choose, not you, and not a "gung ho abortionist" that supposedly doesn't know better than you about fetal development.
This is the truth, everybody has seen "your baby at X weeks is the size of a Y" in magazines, online, doctor's office, everywhere. Suggesting the people actually having the procedure done to themselves don't know, or that it's an easy decision to make, goes to show you don't have any skin in the game at all, you don't understand why people seek the procedure, at all, you care about imposing your will on others more than the women faced with making difficult decisions.
We can use this tech to create supersoldiers with embedded mini brains in their arms (faster reaction times for operating weapons,ships) as well as a backup brain in the gut to keep fighting if headshot.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Once a mere cluster of human brain cells from mild-mannered Richard A. Torrence cultured in a lab, when mated to the spinal cord and peripheral nervous system of a mouse and grown into a complete organism, he can now successfully navigate incredibly complex, labyrinthine mazes to find a bit of cheese or peanut butter! Able to run on a hamster wheel for several seconds on end before becoming bored and losing interest, able to leap from one artificial plastic rock to another nearby while caged, in a single bound, Richard A. Torrence has become... Mouse Man!
However, he is too lazy to bother finding the cheese until he is nearly starving to death, and he spends most of his time watching the TV mounted to the ceiling of the office adjacent to the lab.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
As someone whose wife died from ALS, thank you for saying this.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
They don't care about individual rights. There isn't any "women's" right that isn't also a "man's" right. You either own your own body or you do not.
And, very few liberals - and close to no progressives - believe that we own our own bodies.
After all - individual ownership of owns body is antithetical to the nanny state.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
those are not human life, and our ancestors were cooking meat 250,000 years ago if not 1.8 million years ago, it's natural.