{"id":158917,"date":"2023-02-24T19:27:58","date_gmt":"2023-02-25T01:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/human-mini-brains-grafted-into-injured-rats-restored-their-sight"},"modified":"2023-02-24T19:27:58","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T01:27:58","slug":"human-mini-brains-grafted-into-injured-rats-restored-their-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/human-mini-brains-grafted-into-injured-rats-restored-their-sight","title":{"rendered":"Human Mini-Brains Grafted Into Injured Rats Restored Their Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/108650530?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"640\" height=\"272\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-stem-cell\/fulltext\/S1934-5909(23)00004-8\">A<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-stem-cell\/fulltext\/S1934-5909(23)00004-8\">study<\/a> published in <em>Cell Stem Cell<\/em> this month concluded that they can. Using brain organoids made from human cells, a team led by Dr. Han-Chiao Isaac Chen at the University of Pennsylvania transplanted the mini-brains into adult rats with substantial damage to their visual cortex\u2014the area that supports vision.<\/p>\n<p>In just three months, the mini-brains merged with the rats\u2019 brains. When the team shone flashing lights for the animals, the organoids spiked with electrical activity. In other words, the human mini-brain received signals from the rats\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just random noise. Similar to our visual cortex, some of the mini-brain\u2019s neurons gradually developed a preference for light shone at a particular orientation. Imagine looking at a black and white windmill blow toy as your eyes adjust to the different moving stripes. It sounds simple, but the ability of your eyes to adjust\u2014dubbed \u201corientation selection\u201d\u2014is a sophisticated level of visual processing that\u2019s critical to how we perceive the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study published in Cell Stem Cell this month concluded that they can. Using brain organoids made from human cells, a team led by Dr. Han-Chiao Isaac Chen at the University of Pennsylvania transplanted the mini-brains into adult rats with substantial damage to their visual cortex\u2014the area that supports vision. In just three months, the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158917","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\/672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}