It can feel things, direct the animal’s behaviour, and also shed light on disease
. Henry David Thoreau’s maxim is one which scientists generally take to heart when investigating complex natural phenomena. And there is no known natural phenomenon more complex than the human brain. Since 2011, therefore, Sergiu Pasca of Stanford University, who studies it, has been doing just that. His simplified models are structures called cortical organoids. They are spheres a few millimetres across, composed of specially grown human nerve cells, which act as simulacra of brain tissue.
A young rat’s brain is still a work in progress, with new connections between its nerve cells forming all the time. Dr Pasca and his colleagues therefore hoped that the cells in their implants would join the party, by connecting with their murine neighbours. Monitoring suggested that they did. Magnetic-resonance imaging of the rats showed that 70% of the implants had lodged successfully in the animals’ somatosensory cortices and were growing and thriving.
To find out how his implanted cells would respond to this, Dr Pasca smuggled into some of the implants the gene for a protein that flashed when they were active. This flagged up human-derived, as opposed to rat-derived cells, so that these could be monitored by electrode. And, on a gratifying number of occasions, the cells under study did indeed respond electrically when the whiskers were displaced.
Dr Pasca combined his manipulation of the implants’ cells with an experimental technique called operant conditioning. This rewards a particular action performed in response to a particular stimulus, and thus trains an animal to react to that stimulus with that action. In the case of the implanted rats, the reward was a drink of water if they responded to blue light shone at the implant through a skull-penetrating optical fibre by licking the spout that delivered the reward.
Timothy syndrome is a rare and dangerous condition which causes a form of autism. It also results in seizures, anatomical abnormalities such as fused fingers and toes, and life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia. It is the consequence of a mutation in a calcium-ion-channel gene.
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