Whoa! Scientists Grow A Brain In A Dish
Brain In A Dish A 3-D model brain organoid with different brain regions. All cells show up blue, neural stem cells are red and neurons are green. Madeline A. Lancaster It may not be same shape as a 9-week-old embryonic human brain, but it's got a lot of the same functional organization. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria, have grown a three-dimensional, self-organizing model of a developing human brain in the lab using stem cells. Besides just being cool (brains in petri dishes!), the system could be used to model neurological diseases in an actual human brain, rather than in an animal model that may not develop in exactly the same way. The cerebral organoid, as its creators have dubbed it, resembles the early developing regions of a human brain, with distinct regions like the dorsal cortex, the ventral forebrain and even an immature retina. This is...