{"id":95523,"date":"2019-08-29T13:22:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T20:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/scientists-see-human-like-brain-waves-in-lab-grown-mini-brains"},"modified":"2019-08-29T13:22:25","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T20:22:25","slug":"scientists-see-human-like-brain-waves-in-lab-grown-mini-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/scientists-see-human-like-brain-waves-in-lab-grown-mini-brains","title":{"rendered":"Scientists See Human-Like Brain Waves in Lab-Grown Mini-Brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-see-human-like-brain-waves-in-lab-grown-mini-brains2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One way that scientists can non-invasively study the human brain is by growing \u201cmini-brains,\u201d clusters of brain cells each about the size of a pea, in the lab. In a fascinating progression of this line of research, a team this week reports that they observed human-like brainwaves from these organoids.<\/p>\n<p>Previous studies of mini-brains have demonstrated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/lab-grown-mini-brain-spontaneously-chains-itself-to-nearby-spinal-cord-and-muscle-tissue\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">movement<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-019-0350-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nerve tract development<\/a>, but the new study from researchers at the University of California San Diego, led by biologist Alysson Muotri, is the first to record human-like neural activity. In their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-stem-cell\/fulltext\/S1934-5909(19)30337-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">paper<\/a>, published in <em>Cell Stem Cell <\/em>on Thursday, the researchers write that they observed brain wave patterns resembling those of a developing human. This sophistication in the <em>in vitro<\/em> model is a step to enable scientists to use mini-brains to study brain development, model diseases, and learn about the evolution of brains, according to Muotri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One way that scientists can non-invasively study the human brain is by growing \u201cmini-brains,\u201d clusters of brain cells each about the size of a pea, in the lab. In a fascinating progression of this line of research, a team this week reports that they observed human-like brainwaves from these organoids. Previous studies of mini-brains have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95523","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\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}