De Powler and Van Der Hagen: Could Brain Organoids Change Human Behavior?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Brain organoids have become increasingly intricate since they were first created in 20 13 by madeline lancaster and jugen kneblich. De pawles team did the same transplant experiments using nurons made from cells from people with down sindrome. They found that these nurons formed less dynamic networks with lower neural activity. Neither team has tested cognition or behavior in the transplanted mice but all report that the mice generally behaved like ther non transplanted peers.

The development of brain chimaeras – made up of human and animal neurons – is an area of research that has hugely expanded in the past five years. Proponents say that these systems are yielding important insights into health and disease, but others say the chimeras represent an ethical grey zone, because of the potential to blur the line between humans and other animals, or to recapitulate human-like cognition in an animal.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Hybrid brains: the ethics of transplanting human neurons into animals

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.