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| A cross-section of a brain organoid, showing the initial formation of a cortical plate, with each color marking a different type of brain cell (AFP Photo/HO) |
Washington (AFP) - Scientists reported Thursday they had picked up human-like electrical activity in lab-grown brains for the first time, paving the way to model neurological conditions and answer fundamental questions on how our gray matter develops.
It's not
clear whether the pea-sized brains are conscious: the team behind the
breakthrough suspect they're not because the activity resembles that of preterm
babies, but they cannot say for certain, opening up a new ethical dimension to
this area of research.
So-called
"cerebral organoids" derived from adult stem cells have been around
for a decade or so but have never previously developed functional neural
networks.
"If
you had asked me five years ago 'Would you think that a brain organoid would
ever have a sophisticated network able to generate a brain oscillation?' I
would say no," Alysson Muotri, a biologist at the University of California
San Diego, told AFP.
A paper
published by Muotri and his colleagues in the journal Cell Press said that two
factors were responsible for the breakthrough. The first was a better procedure
to grow stem cells, including optimizing the culture medium formula.
The second
was initially surprising, but also intuitive when the researchers thought about
it: simply allowing the neurons adequate time to develop, just as babies'
brains develop in the womb.
"The
very early stages of human neurodevelopment are encoded in our genome,"
explained Muotri.
The team
began to detect bursts of brain waves from organoids from about two months.
The signals
were sparse at first and all at the same frequency, a pattern seen in very
immature human brains. But as they grew, they produced waves at different
frequencies, and the signals appeared more regularly, suggesting further
development of their neural networks.
Researchers
then compared the brain wave patterns with those of human brains in early
development, by training a machine learning algorithm with the activity
recorded from 39 prematurely born babies.
The program
was successful in predicting how many weeks the organoids had been developing
in their dishes, suggesting they shared a similar growth trajectory to brains
in their natural setting.
The point at which newborn babies attain consciousness, and the definition of consciousness itself, are both contested among scientists.
 |
Pea-size
brain organoids at 10 months old; so-called "cerebral organoids"
derived
from adult stem cells have been around for a decade or so but have
never
previously developed functional neural networks (AFP Photo/HO)
|
The point at which newborn babies attain consciousness, and the definition of consciousness itself, are both contested among scientists.
A French
study in 2013 that looked at the brain activity of babies found they began to
think about images of faces they were shown from the age of five months, appearing
to store the visuals in their temporary "working memory" -- a faculty
they linked to perceptual consciousness.
Applications and ethics
Earlier,
less sophisticated organoids were used to model what happens when the brain is
exposed to diseases like the Zika virus which causes physical malformations.
But there
are also a host of neurological conditions such as autism, epilepsy, and even
psychiatric conditions where problems arise from how the brain network is
wired, not from malformations.
By creating
brain organoids from the stem cells of individuals with these conditions,
scientists could better model them and perhaps one day find cures.
They also
hope to answer more fundamental questions. Muotri said the organoids
development plateaued around nine to 10 months, for reasons that aren't yet
clear.
"I'm
curious about that. I wonder if it's because we don't have a vascularization
system to allow the nutrients to get inside, or it could be that we are just
lacking stimulation" in the form of sensory input.
He hopes to
test both hypotheses.
About
whether the brain organoids are conscious, Muotri said he suspects not because
of its early stage of development.
"But
if you ask me, 'How do you know?' I would say I have no evidence either way,
because we don't even know how to detect consciousness in other systems,"
he said.
"As we
get closer to the human brain, all of these ethical questions will
appear," he admitted, proposing that the field be subject to agreed-upon
limits and regulation.
Related Articles:
"The Addictive Old Energy" + "Timing", US (3), August 12-13, 2017(Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) (The Addictive Old Energy - Text version)
"... Is He Alone? How About You?
What kind of addiction does the old energy have for you? Are you continuing to do things that you think are absolutely correct, working with perceptions that have been given to you in an old energy that you are still wallowing in? Of course, reading this you will say, "Not me." Remember the Korean leader. He still thinks he is right and never saw it. How invested in struggle are you? I have some news. You can't do it for long. First, you lose friends. You can't claim to be one thing and be another anymore.
So let's start extending this teaching. If the darkness is so attractive, is it affecting anything else? The answer? It is absolutely affecting everything else. There's an entire industry we have told you about that will eventually fail because it has been developed in an older energy, worked in an older energy, and has no integrity. The industry is Big Pharma. We've told you that its fall is imminent and the attributes will come from the ones within it, who will expose it. When this actually happens is up to you, since this is free choice of the developing consciousness of your country. However, let's look for a moment, not at the event, but what it may then lead to.
Big Pharma is invested in an old idea that designer chemistry is the answer to healing. This idea has been prevalent for decades and many feel that it is the highest technology available. However, instead, and in the light, there starts to appear another idea entirely: The Human body has an unrealized awareness and it is actually the master healer! The Human body is designed to self-correct. So, therefore, don't put foreign chemistry into it, but instead find out how to give it elegant, specific instruction sets to heal itself. Make them high-technology instruction sets to inform it to heal itself!
This is homeopathy expanded, you might say. There are processes coming that understand that this Human body of yours is so much better than any chemist has ever realized, and the new energy is starting to expose this fact. The answer to healing is not chemistry. The answer to health and healing is by addressing the "smart part" of the Human body, giving it instructions to utilize former unknown systems that are ready to create spontaneous remission and beyond.
Remember my channelling given on the "youthing template" or the fact that you all have dormant "genesis cells" within your body (cells that have the full body blueprint and a source for very young stem cells)? These both were expositions of systems that are smart and ready to create new cells and healing in ways that will seem miraculous! But they need to be "instructed".
Funding Will Trail for Awhile
How much money do you think is invested in the old ways? Right now, there is an industry of investment that is going to fail. So, do you think all this money will then be invested into the new methods? The answer is NO, not right away. Just like the North Korean leader's blindness, the old ways are just too addicting. "Keep it the same," they will yell. "The fall is temporary," they will say. "It always worked before, and it always will." Many investors will lose fortunes. The dysfunction is already being seen clearly. When you turn on your media at night, much of what you hear in the commercial breaks is how the chemistry didn't work! Now you get a chance to join others and sue the pharma companies for bad chemistry! You think something is beginning to break? It is. You see, they are already wallowing in something that's going to make them fail. They are advertising how broken the very system is. Both big pharma and their investors don't see the light coming yet, even though it is becoming dysfunctional before their eyes. ..."
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