{"id":36367,"date":"2025-11-08T16:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T17:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=36367"},"modified":"2025-11-12T02:23:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T02:23:53","slug":"what-scientists-are-learning-from-brain-organoids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=36367","title":{"rendered":"What Scientists Are Learning From Brain Organoids"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Paola Arlotta\u2019s lab at Harvard is a long, windowless hallway that is visited every day by one of her scientists. They go there to inspect racks of scientific muffin pans. In every cavity of every pan is a pool of pink liquid, at the bottom of which are dozens of translucent nuggets no bigger than peppercorns.<\/p>\n

The nuggets are clusters of neurons and other cells, as many as two million, normally found in the human brain. On their daily rounds, the scientists check that the nuggets are healthy and well-fed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo first-year students walk in that corridor,\u201d Dr. Arlotta said. \u201cYou have to be experienced enough to go there, because the risk is very high that you\u2019re going to mess up the work that took years to build.\u201d<\/p>\n

The oldest nuggets are now seven years old. Back in 2018, Dr. Arlotta and her colleagues created them from skin cells originally donated by volunteers. A chemical cocktail transformed them into the progenitor cells normally found in the fetal human brain.<\/p>\n

The cells multiplied into neurons and other types of brain cells. They wrapped their branches around each other and pulsed with electrical activity, much like the pulses that race around inside our heads. One such nugget can contain more neurons than the entire brain of a honeybee. But Dr. Arlotta is quick to stress that they are not brains. She and her colleagues call them brain organoids<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so important to call them organoids and not brains, because they\u2019re no such thing,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are reductionist replicas that can show us some things that are the same, and many others that are not.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In Paola Arlotta\u2019s lab at Harvard is a long, windowless hallway that is visited every day by one of her scientists. They go there to inspect racks of scientific muffin pans. In every cavity of every pan is a pool of pink liquid, at the bottom of which are dozens of translucent nuggets no bigger than peppercorns.The nuggets are clusters of neurons and other cells, as many as two million, normally found in the human brain. On their daily rounds, the scientists check that the nuggets are healthy and well-fed.\u201cNo first-year students walk in that corridor,\u201d Dr. Arlotta said. \u201cYou have to be experienced enough to go there, because the risk is very high that you\u2019re going to mess up the work that took years to build.\u201dThe oldest nuggets are now seven years old. Back in 2018, Dr. Arlotta and her colleagues created them from skin cells originally donated by volunteers. A chemical cocktail transformed them into the progenitor cells normally found in the fetal human brain.The cells multiplied into neurons and other types of brain cells. They wrapped their branches around each other and pulsed with electrical activity, much like the pulses that race around inside our heads. One such nugget can contain more neurons than the entire brain of a honeybee. But Dr. Arlotta is quick to stress that they are not brains. She and her colleagues call them brain organoids.\u201cIt\u2019s so important to call them organoids and not brains, because they\u2019re no such thing,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are reductionist replicas that can show us some things that are the same, and many others that are not.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36369,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36370,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36367\/revisions\/36370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}