“My brain! It’s my second favorite organ!” cried an aghast Woody Allen as his time-traveling character in 1973’s Sleeper, Miles Monroe, was about to have his head removed at a robot recycling plant. Because my brain is my first favorite organ, I found the news that pea-sized embryonic human brains are growing in a lab at the Austrian Academy of Science, published online in Nature, quite exciting.
The “cerebral organoids” take cell culture a giant step forward. These things aren’t just sheets or spheres of identical cells, but organized aggregates of different cell types that seemingly recapitulate a gestating human cerebrum. The organoids are the brainchild of Madeline Lancaster, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Jürgen Knoblich.
Read the full, original story here: “10 Reasons Why Growing A Human Brain-in-a-Dish is Terrific”
Additional Resources
- “Whoa! Scientists Grow A Brain In A Dish” Popular Science
- “Researchers Grow 3-D Human Brain Tissues” MIT Technology Review
