{"id":226927,"date":"2025-12-11T13:03:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T19:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/scientists-gave-human-brain-cells-to-a-rat-why"},"modified":"2025-12-11T13:03:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T19:03:50","slug":"scientists-gave-human-brain-cells-to-a-rat-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/scientists-gave-human-brain-cells-to-a-rat-why","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Gave Human Brain Cells to a Rat. Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a7waWv0uWG0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Scientists transplanted human cerebral organoids (\u201cminibrains\u201d) into rats, to better study brain disorders. The neurons grown in vivo looked more like mature human brain cells than those grown in vitro, and they made better models of Timothy syndrome. The human minibrains formed deep connections with the rat brains, received sensory information, and drove the rat\u2019s behavior. Points of Clarification (Q&amp;A based on common comments) Support the channel: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \/ ihmcurious More on how minibrains are grown and used, and the issue of organoid consciousness: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \u2022 Growing \u201cMini-Brains\u201d in a Lab: Human Brai\u2026 On the topic of organoid sentience and playing pong: <img alt=\"\" class=\"\"> \u2022 Lab-Grown \u201cMini-Brain\u201d Learns Pong \u2014 Is Th\u2026 Organoid transplant study: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s4158\">https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s4158<\/a>\u2026 music by John Bartmann: <a href=\"https:\/\/johnbartmann.com\">https:\/\/johnbartmann.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists transplanted human cerebral organoids (\u201cminibrains\u201d) into rats, to better study brain disorders. The neurons grown in vivo looked more like mature human brain cells than those grown in vitro, and they made better models of Timothy syndrome. The human minibrains formed deep connections with the rat brains, received sensory information, and drove the rat\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,42,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-media-arts","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226927","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\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}