Rats With (Part) Human Brains (statnews.com) 54
Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from the Boston Globe's health-news site STAT:
The scientist flicked on a laser, filling the rat's brain with blue light. The rodent, true to its past two weeks of training, scampered across its glass box to a tiny spout, where it was duly rewarded with a drink of water. From the outside, this would appear to be a pretty run-of-the-mill neuroscience experiment, except for the fact that the neurons directing the rat to its thirst-quenching reward didn't contain any rat DNA. Instead, they came from a human "mini-brain" — a ball of human tissue called an organoid — that researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine had grown in a lab and implanted in the rodent's cortex months before.
The experiment — part of a study published Wednesday in Nature — is the first describing human neurons influencing another species' behavior. The study also showed that signals could go the other way; tendrils of human neurons mingled with the rodent brain cells and fired in response to air rustling the rats' whiskers.
The advance opens the door to using such human-rodent chimeras to better understand how the human brain develops and what goes wrong in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, and epilepsy. When the Stanford scientists implanted organoids grown from the cells of patients with a severe genetic brain disorder, they could watch the neurons develop abnormally with unprecedented clarity.
"This paper really pushes the envelope," said neuroscientist Tomasz Nowakowski, of the University of California, San Francisco, who uses brain organoids in his research on neurodevelopmental disorders but was not involved in the new work. "The field is desperate for more experimental models. And what's really important about this study is it demonstrates that brain organoids can complete their maturation trajectory when transplanted. So it really expands our toolkit for asking more nuanced questions about how genetic mutations lead to behavioral disorders."
It's an example of how stem cells have revolutionized brain research. By "doing their experiments in very young rats whose cortexes are not yet saturated with synapses," the article points out, the researchers "found that the human neurons easily integrated into the animals' rapidly expanding circuitry, which provided them with the stimulation they needed to push past previous developmental barriers."
The experiment — part of a study published Wednesday in Nature — is the first describing human neurons influencing another species' behavior. The study also showed that signals could go the other way; tendrils of human neurons mingled with the rodent brain cells and fired in response to air rustling the rats' whiskers.
The advance opens the door to using such human-rodent chimeras to better understand how the human brain develops and what goes wrong in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, and epilepsy. When the Stanford scientists implanted organoids grown from the cells of patients with a severe genetic brain disorder, they could watch the neurons develop abnormally with unprecedented clarity.
"This paper really pushes the envelope," said neuroscientist Tomasz Nowakowski, of the University of California, San Francisco, who uses brain organoids in his research on neurodevelopmental disorders but was not involved in the new work. "The field is desperate for more experimental models. And what's really important about this study is it demonstrates that brain organoids can complete their maturation trajectory when transplanted. So it really expands our toolkit for asking more nuanced questions about how genetic mutations lead to behavioral disorders."
It's an example of how stem cells have revolutionized brain research. By "doing their experiments in very young rats whose cortexes are not yet saturated with synapses," the article points out, the researchers "found that the human neurons easily integrated into the animals' rapidly expanding circuitry, which provided them with the stimulation they needed to push past previous developmental barriers."
Satan Laughing Spreads His Wings (Score:3, Insightful)
Some things just seem wrong. This is one of those things.
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Some things just seem wrong. This is one of those things.
Ya, but fair. There are probably lots of humans with (part) rat brains -- judging by their behavior, anyway.
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Does Algernon even like flowers? (Score:2)
I guess you could ask the rat
Re: Satan Laughing Spreads His Wings (Score:2)
Yeah, most of that can be chalked up to the sheer foulness of today's society. Some would turn out bad no matter what, but most are a product of their environent.
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Some things just seem wrong. This is one of those things.
Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about this. It's hard to quantify, but it just feels wrong.
Re: Satan Laughing Spreads His Wings (Score:1)
Re: Satan Laughing Spreads His Wings (Score:2)
You forgot the real possibility of nuclear armageddon.
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No way man. This will allow someone to wire in and remote control a rat with full sensory connectivity. They could even feel the convulsions and overly slow death as the rat dies from ingesting rat poison. How could this ever be misused? Isn't science amazing?
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Some things just seem wrong. This is one of those things.
My question is: what office is he going to run for? Will he challenge Gavin Newsom in the next primary, or will he be content with working his way up starting with a spot on the LA City Council?
Playing God, courting disaster (Score:1)
I'm sure some people are reading this and thinking "Pinky and the Brain", and getting a chuckle out of this. But in reality this is a perversion of science and nature. What we are going to end up with is more of a "Goliath" (for the religious types), which by legend were the result of a supernatural being mixed with a human one (IIRC). A bunch of warped, monsterous chimeras of all kinds may result out of this.
There are things that we should never fuck with, especially in this day and age, and this is one of
Re: Playing God, courting disaster (Score:2)
I see this got modded down and so I wonder, do people want these things to be created. And let's say they are, how will the law treat a "human-dog" or what other shit will no doubt be pulled by the real life mad scientists when the tech reaches that level? And imagine being the "human-dog". We can't even treat each other right in regards to someone else having a different skin tone. Really, we are no where near being to handle what will come out of all of this and we should not even be trying
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Indeed. On the other hand, the human race has a long history of doing thing that are just obviously wrong. Too many assholes with no morals and big egos.
Great... (Score:4, Funny)
Great, now rats will be spending all day on Instagram instead of doing important lab work.
Willard (Score:2)
so .. (Score:2)
-- cat
Spoiler: It's Martin. (Score:2)
Kill Martin.
Animal torture instead of science (Score:1)
Disgusting.
Genetically Enhanced (Score:2)
What are we going to do tonight, Brain? (Score:5, Funny)
The same thing we do every night, Pinky, try to take over the world.
Big deal (Score:2)
Research... (Score:2)
Well, they are doing this in the name of "research" to help humans.
What is creepy about it is that it's only a matter of time until someone creates a real Frankenstein monster (rat, cat, dog, pig, etc.)
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...it's only a matter of time until someone creates a real Frankenstein monster (rat, cat, dog, pig, etc.)
Already happened - I think they called it "Donald".
Oh please (Score:3)
Rats are 90% human already, anyway. I've actually scoured through both exomes and genomes quite a bit. FFS, especially the exome. I could show you some of the protein sequences, and you idiots would not be able to spot the difference without going letter by letter. Most of the genes are the same except for a few differences. If it was the two genetic codes were novels, it is changed in so few places that one could sue the other for plagiarism. Physical anatomy is also very similar, only a few transformations from looking like a human. A topologist might even call them the same. I mean, the arm anatomy of a human is humerus-radius/ulna-carpal-metacarpal-phalanges .. a rat's humerus-radius/ulna-carpal-metacarpal-phalanges also look similar with some minor variations. I mean, seriously, for example the carpal bones are not all that different .. two rows of bones, and there are 8 of them .. the ulna looks similar, except I guess the olecranon process looks a bit different. Of course an adult rat's is much smaller than an adult human .. but that's just a scaling factor that is modulateable with a hormone.
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That's nice n all. Thanks for the science lesson.
This makes the rest of us feel really squidgy.
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Politicians (Score:2)
Follow up documentary (Score:3)
Welcome to our new Rat/Human overlords! (Score:3)
What's next, pigs with wings?
Horses with a single horn on their forehead?
Humans with fairy wings?
Dogs too stupid to get out of danger? Yeah, that's real...
Mice with human ears? Oh, wait, that's already a thing.
People with the compassion of a rat? Yep, we have that too.
Gee, writing that all out, it's a bit sad. Fortunately, our new Rat/Human overlords are now responsible for the mess human/only have created!
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been there done that (Score:2)
Well, this is horrifying (Score:3)
This, and the news stories about creating trainable neural-net computers using real neurons in a culture dish.
Look, I get it that they are working with very small clusters of neurons, and there's no way the current projects can achieve consciousness. The problem is that this sort of research is in its infancy. What happens when they scale up by a factor of 10? Or 1,000,000? (Scaling up tends to be very easy to do in biology).
I can think of very few worse things than being reincarnated as a mega-cluster of neurons inside of a rodent brain. It makes me think of one of the grislier scenes from Alex Garland's "Annihilation".
Brown Jenkin (Score:2)
Rats with human brains? (Score:2)
This won't end well.
Those remakes are a bit too much (Score:2)
Creating rats with real human level intellect for a Secret of NIMH remake is taking it a bit too far
Has literature taught us nothing??? (Score:2)
1956 - X Minus One Radio Show - "Chain of Command" - Old Time Radio Download - "A funny story about intelligent mice living in a top secret laboratory. Charlie is a night watchman at a secret lab who talks with a mouse named George. George’s mouse wife Clara is concerned about the trap right outside the door and that one of their children might get caught in it. Charlie agrees to talk to his boss about it but his boss thinks it is some kind of a joke and tells him that next time one of the mice compla
Was Mrs. Frisby there? (Score:3)
I read this book as a kid.
Mandatory post for this one, I think (Score:2)
Um (Score:2)
The advance opens the door to using such human-rodent chimeras to better understand how the human brain develops and what goes wrong in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, and epilepsy.
Almost all psychiatric conditions are considered to have both genetic and environmental components.
It's difficult to nail down diagnostic criteria even across cultures, let alone species ...
Sure, there are some narrow, specifically chemical things you can test in other species, but let's not pretend they are doing this rat-human chimera crap for any other reason than "we can" and "it's cool", lol
It's the rats of Nimb!! (Score:1)
Need to watch out for rats stealing christmas lights.
Flowers... (Score:2)
for Algernon.
Uplift Universe is getting started it seems (Score:2)
The Uplift Universe is getting started, it seems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps unintentional Uplift begins (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
evil scientists are why people fall for flat earth (Score:2)
No wonder no one trusts them.
Time to reign in federal research grants.
HG Wells wrote about this (Score:2)