{"id":100083,"date":"2019-12-24T04:42:37","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T12:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/this-years-4-most-mind-boggling-stories-about-the-brain"},"modified":"2019-12-24T04:42:37","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T12:42:37","slug":"this-years-4-most-mind-boggling-stories-about-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/this-years-4-most-mind-boggling-stories-about-the-brain","title":{"rendered":"This Year\u2019s 4 Most Mind-Boggling Stories About the Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-years-4-most-mind-boggling-stories-about-the-brain2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>2019 was nuts for neuroscience. I said this last year too, but that\u2019s the nature of accelerating technologies: the advances just keep coming.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019re the theoretical showdowns: a <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/10\/29\/the-origin-of-consciousness-in-the-brain-is-about-to-be-tested\/\">mano a mano battle<\/a> of where consciousness arises in the brain, <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/10\/15\/this-strange-rule-is-what-makes-the-human-brain-so-powerful\/\">wildly creative theories<\/a> of why our brains are so powerful, and <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/07\/18\/the-first-complete-brain-wiring-diagram-of-any-species-is-here\/\">the first complete brain wiring diagram<\/a> of any species. This year also saw the <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/09\/11\/new-hybrid-brain-map-reveals-how-neurons-connect\/\">birth of \u201chybrid\u201d brain atlases<\/a> that seek to interrogate brain function from multiple levels\u2014genetic, molecular, and wiring, synthesizing individual maps into multiple comprehensive layers.<\/p>\n<p>Brain organoids also had a wild year. These lab-grown nuggets of brain tissue, not much larger than a lentil, <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/09\/08\/lab-grown-minibrains-show-activity-similar-to-babies-brains\/\">sparked with activity similar to preterm babies<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/04\/18\/a-lab-grown-brain-twitched-an-isolated-muscle-heres-why-thats-amazing\/\">made isolated muscles twitch<\/a>, and can <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/06\/27\/scientists-can-now-clone-brain-organoids-heres-why-that-matters\/\">now be cloned into armies of near-identical \u201csiblings<\/a>\u201d for experimentation\u2014prompting a <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2019\/07\/03\/could-lab-grown-brains-develop-consciousness\/\">new round of debate<\/a> on whether they\u2019ll ever gain consciousness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2019 was nuts for neuroscience. I said this last year too, but that\u2019s the nature of accelerating technologies: the advances just keep coming. There\u2019re the theoretical showdowns: a mano a mano battle of where consciousness arises in the brain, wildly creative theories of why our brains are so powerful, and the first complete brain wiring [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}