Despite everything Mary Shelley warned us about, scientists have gone ahead and made some human brains with eyeballs.
Despite everything Mary Shelley warned us about, scientists have gone ahead and made some human brains with eyeballs.
According to a recent study, scientists from University Hospital Düsseldorf in Germany have shown that miniature brain organoids created from human stem cells can organically grow “primitive sensory structures that are light sensitive”. In other words, eyes.
add this to the ‘stop it, stop doing that, why are you doing that’ pile https://t.co/rLz5eNXwzt
— james hennessy (@jrhennessy) August 17, 2021
Before you reach for your pitchfork and round up a posse of angry villagers, you should know that lab-grown organoids are not functioning brains. Rather, they are simple stem cell clusters replicating blobs of brain tissue without thoughts, feelings or a burning desire to wreak bloody vengeance upon their creator and the world that shuns them.
Optic cups, the foundational element of the eyeball, have previously been grown in labs from human stem cells. But this study marks the first time that brain organoids have been coaxed to develop them independently.
Not only that, but these rudimentary visual sensors were found to contain a variety of retinal cell types, organised into light-responsive neural networks that displayed retinal connectivity to regions of the brain tissue. Not bad for some blobs.
Neuroscientist Jay Gopalakrishnan says that the study’s findings will be highly beneficial to medical research:
“These organoids can help to study brain-eye interactions during embryo development, model congenital retinal disorders, and generate patient-specific retinal cell types for personalized drug testing and transplantation therapies.”
But he did scream all that from on top of a gothic castle in a lightning storm.
Regardless of the study’s incredible scientific achievement, I think we can all agree that brains with eyes are gross. They just are.
Even if they belong to your beautiful unborn child.
The real reason they discourage MRIs during pregnancy is because then people would realise they’re incubating nightmare demons and would be rightfully terrified pic.twitter.com/55zEeOofsP
— Katie (@ZiziFothSi) May 19, 2021
If you see something, and you’re not a lab-grown brain organoid, say something to felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au.
