Researchers Grow Tiny Human Brain In Lab 244
schwit1 writes: A team of researchers from Ohio State University claim to have grown a human brain in their lab that approximates the brain of a five-week-old fetus. They say the tiny brain is not conscious, but it could be used to test drugs and study diseases, but scientific peers urge caution. "The brain, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, is engineered from adult human skin cells and is the most complete human brain model yet developed, [the researchers say]. ... Anand and his colleagues claim to have reproduced 99% of the brain’s diverse cell types and genes. They say their brain also contains a spinal cord, signalling circuitry and even a retina." The team's data has not yet been peer reviewed.
Shocking (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Shocking (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a lot of lab work that makes me squeamish. Come to think of it, there's even more stuff that happens outside a lab that makes me squeamish, but still produces important benefits for my life and many others.
I have kids myself, and I understand how having them can make you empathetic in new ways. This certainly isn't a bad thing.
But suppose your baby were diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. Would you still reject research that relied on techniques like those described here? Would you reject a treatment or cure, with proven efficacy, because its development had relied on this sort of model? Would you subject your child to experimental therapies that had some chance of success, but some chance of horrible, painful failure, if you instead had the option of trying them first on a model like this grown from your own child's skin cells?
Like I said, some lab work makes me squeamish. I respect the importance of Institutional Review Boards to keep abuses in check. But, on balance, I'm glad that researchers continue to push into new avenues like this, and I expect that the research will eventually prevent a great deal of human suffering.
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If my baby was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, and it was possible to cure this disease by murdering a hobo and offering his heart's blood to some voodoo-related entity, I might seriously consider doing it. That doesn't make it right, of course.
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What hobo murder and voodoo practice have to do with scientifical experiments involving culture of adult cells?
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Emotional Argument (Score:2)
See, this is how we can be sure your argument is emotion-based instead of fact-driven. Unsurprisingly, your hormonal adjustment and parental instincts interfere with clear thinking. Logically, you having a child is unrelated and irrelevant event to evaluating merits and ethics of medical research.
Too bad you succumbed to "Think of the children" hysteria, and my condolences on the premature demise of your logical self
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Did your opinion about equating/similarizing scientific research with 'toying with things' increase or decrease (or stay the same)? Just my opinion, but my suspicion is that someone smart enough to do research would have to either directly consider or consciously set aside the (frequently culturally specific) moral implications of their work, especially in the life sciences fields, to be able to get anything done.
Through history, scientific research has always conflicted with someone's sense (at least on t
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"I used to be all for this type of research. Then my wife and I had a child a few months ago and my feelings towards what is acceptable to toy with changed"
Yes, so long as we have laws around homicide we need a legal definition of when life begins. But since we use brain death as the secular standard for the end of life, why don't we draw the line on abortion as the start of brain activity? The same criterion would apply to use of fetal tissue and to experiments like this one.
Re: Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the line between 'brain that has a consciousness' and 'Skynet, Elon Musk's worst nightmare'?
Google could easily afford to grow a brain the size of ten thousand human brains. Would there be network effects of some kind, or a transition akin to the way turbulent flow passes a threshold and goes into chaos from normal oscillation? At what point is a brain a super-brain and are humans near that threshold?
Interesting times we live in. Someone, somewhere, WILL try it.
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Oh yeah, we already know how that will turn out. [ytimg.com]
Re: Shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
They should just perform this research on homeless people of all ages. They're not worth anything.
Or maybe Jews, or gays, or any other group that doesn't meet your approval. Personally, I think this type of research should be done on people who post as AC on /.
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You want to do *brain* research on ./ users? Have you really thought this through?
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Are we even sure that ACs have brains? They often seem to be just mindlessly mashing their keyboards.
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What if we could grow some kind of uberbrain to solve difficult problems and mathematical calculations?
We'd obviously need to feed it some kind of chemical to keep it going. Some kind of season or salt to keep the brain processes executing, what shall we call it?
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The Matrix?
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Who said there is a line?
We can draw a line, if we want. We can draw it anywhere we like.
Which, by the way, is exactly what neurons do. They take fuzzy input and draw an arbitrary line over it based on examples and feedback.
Re: Shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
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Depends... (Score:4, Interesting)
Human brain activity starts at ~12 weeks
And yet, some higher functionality, like the frontal lobe, only get fully developed and fully functional only *AFTER* birth.
(For some obvious space-saving reasons that got selected by evolution once we start to try walking upright).
That's why some toys are inappropriate for kids under 36 months old. The part of the brain that prevents them for choking on anything coming nearby their mouth isn't there yet.
The brain isn't a magical machine which a switch that suddenly get turned on at a set point in time.
It's a horrendously complicated machine that only gets to working very progressively and slowly over time, some parts finishing getting wired and myelinated (=electrically insulated) only after on the other side of the birth cannal, when size restrictions matter less.
At 12 weeks, even if a few neurons starts firing, you're far away from the complexity and awarerness of a full grown kids brain.
For fuck's sake, the baby won't have enough brain activity for such simple tasks as preventing itself to choke, and you expect a bunch of neural cells which have barely started to fire to be anything more intelligent than a cockroach ?!
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It doesn't get turned off like a switch, with the slow decay that comes with Alzheimers. Parts of it are abruptly erased in traumatic brain injuries. Why in the name of the god of all bullshit avoidance should it get turned *on* like a switch, unless we're back in the shiny happy tinsel world of make-believe?
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Re: Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Define "Human brain activity". Please explain how it can be differentiated from "squirrel brain activity", "snake brain activity", etc. Otherwise, this is a completely meaningless phrase.
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I thought it was about a week into 3rd trimester. (Score:2)
Human brain activity starts at ~12 weeks. 22 is the taking of a human life.
Which "brain activity" are you referring to?
I was under the impression that the inter-neuronal interconnections of the cognitive portion of the human brain did not begin to form until about a week into the third trimester. Before that those sections were essentially "a kit of parts, not yet assembled into a computer".
So are you talking about other "brain functions" - like low-level automation of body functions? Or are you claiming
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Telling a woman that murder is wrong is intrusion into her personal life?
Identifying that human brain activity begins at 12 weeks is saying that it is a human life at that point, so killing it should be considered murder. A mother that smokes, drinks, does drugs while knowing she is pregnant is considered to be committing child abuse. I don't know where your obese argument is headed, but I don't see that as causing problems for the child. If you want to try and argue that child abuse is perfectly accepta
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http://ash.org/custody-and-smo... [ash.org]
It appears that with smoking around children at least, you are wrong.
I never said I had no problem with it, I actually quite clearly indicated that smoking, drinking, drugs, whatever IS child abuse. You are the one trying to argue that it isn't, though it has been determined by the state to be so.
I haven't made a big deal out of forcing anything. I stated that it is murder, and as murder, there are some reasons for it to be acceptable in society, and some conditions which
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Wow. wombat. You're the one who is deflecting and doing it very well with your "life unworthy of life" arguments.
By your logic, it should be OK to kill kids who are already born because a lot of parents abuse them through poisoning (second-hand smoke, feeding them too much junk food, etc), plus all kinds of other abuse like sexual abuse, emotional abuse, slavery, playing One Direction music for them, or teaching them BASIC.
Just think how much suffering we could eliminate if we could just put these poor kids
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"But it's okay if the woman smokes, drinks heavily, does drugs or is obese while pregnant, right? "
No it isn't Obese is a health risk for the mother not really the baby BTW.
Doing drugs is also illegal.
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And if a doctor knowing prescribed one and it was not necessary for the life of the mother or the mother was not fully informed of the danger he would be in legal trouble.
Re: Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey moron, who are you going to blame for spontaneous abortions? Whose lives are you going to impoverish because they can't afford to support a child, especially if the child is going to have extreme defects requiring continuous connection to expensive medical equipment?
Most people claiming "all abortions are crimes" are basing their statements on their religious beliefs. Take your religion and shove it into that dark, moist place where your head already is.
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Hey moron, who are you going to blame for spontaneous abortions? Whose lives are you going to impoverish because they can't afford to support a child, especially if the child is going to have extreme defects requiring continuous connection to expensive medical equipment?
Most people claiming "all abortions are crimes" are basing their statements on their religious beliefs. Take your religion and shove it into that dark, moist place where your head already is.
I consider myself a religious Christian. I believe that all optional abortions should be illegal (or at least not funded by tax dollars). At the same time, I will fight for clean and safe places to perform legal abortions under certain circumstances. If the pregnancy was the result of rape, the women should have the option to terminate the pregnancy without being shamed. If the mother's very life is in jeopardy because of some complication, she should have the option to terminate the pregnancy. If there is
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Um, forcing your will on other humans just because you can't breed and you want a baby is way beyond shady, it's manipulative and cruel to force others to be your "baby factories" for your entitled self. There is no valid reason for any more reproduction of the species other than those based in selfishness or superstition. Of course, just my opinion.
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Um, forcing your will on other humans just because you can't breed and you want a baby is way beyond shady, it's manipulative and cruel to force others to be your "baby factories" for your entitled self. There is no valid reason for any more reproduction of the species other than those based in selfishness or superstition. Of course, just my opinion.
You have things mixed up in your head. The childless couple didn't get the woman pregnant, nor did they turn her into a "baby factory". The process by which women get pregnant has been known since before recorded history. If the woman doesn't want to get pregnant, she knows what activity to avoid, or what precautions to take. My comments in this post of course exclude the heinous situation where the woman was raped (I personally wouldn't want a reminder of such a violation).
The moral question is when does a
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So you have problems with people who are willing to adopt children, but the entitled people killing defenseless babies aren't entitled to you?
Nice misrepresentation of what I stated, or really, really bad reading comprehension.
I'll re-state my opinion in a simpler way, in deference to you, Coren22, I have a real problem with folks telling women they can't control their own bodies. IMO, it's no one's fucking business at all, except for the host. Can't breed and don't want to adopt older kids, brown or yellow kids, kids that just might have fetal alcohol syndrome, you know, the kids that could really use your help? That smacks of entitlement to m
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This is absolutely the best way we have for growing our next generation of politicians and advertising professionals.
Are you kidding? If Google, er, Alphabet could grow thousands of advertising managers in a vat instead of waiting 20+ years, we'd be farking swamped with adverts everywhere.
Not to mention the number of tiny brained politicians vying for TV time.
Do. Not. Want.
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Consciousness (Score:5, Interesting)
How do they know it's 'not conscious'? (Note: I am an atheist.)
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The same way we know that anything else is conscious or unconscious. There's a standard technique. I believe the formal term for it is "begging the question".
If we do accept a definition of consciousness that includes an eraser-sized homunculus brain, though, we're probably already morally and ethically bankrupt, based on how we treat animals with much more sophisticated cognitive capabilities. Unless, of course, you believe one aspect of "consciousness" is that it can only arise in things made of human cel
Re:Consciousness (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean apparently more sophisticated cognitive capabilities. They don't know what this tiny brain is capable of, because it's completely isolated from sensory input. And had no opportunity to develop mentally at all (since, again, it's had no exposure to the world at all). In fact, they argue that because there is no sensory stimulation, the brain can't be thinking. That... well, that's just a crock of shit, quite frankly.
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In fact, they argue that because there is no sensory stimulation, the brain can't be thinking. That... well, that's just a crock of shit, quite frankly.
What do you imagine a brain could possibly think, or how it would think in the first place, if it has never had any sensory input?
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Well, I believe that consciousness can't exist without a "non-self" to differentiate one's "self" from, and I'm at a loss to imagine how that can be conceived without sensory input and experience. I acknowledge that this is only a belief; I have no idea how one would go about proving or disproving it.
Yes, "begging the question". (Score:2)
I meant exactly what I said.
Just try to define consciousness without referring to "awareness", or "subjective experience", or "understanding". It's all begging the question -- in this case, "defining" a concept by equating it to other concepts, and pretending those concepts are already understood, when in reality they're aspects of the same mystery.
Yes, I know most people who mention "begging the question" mean something else entirely. Not this time. Feel free to shoot down an argument I'm not making, but d
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Something to do with an active electrical pattern, firing neurons, etc.? Brain-dead but was never other than brain-dead...
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Most likely there's only neural activity in the brain stem and not on the surface of the brain.
Re:Consciousness (Score:5, Informative)
What has being an atheist to do with knowing if an artificial grown brain is conscious?
We only know that at that stage of development the brain does not generate brain waves, so the scientists assume it has no consciousness yet.
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What has being an atheist to do with knowing if an artificial grown brain is conscious?
Not much, but it's a matter of his motivation for the question. It's quite standard to assume that anyone against embryonic research is religious and only building an argument that justifies existing bias. But there are non-religious people that find it kind of icky, and see the lines as being very blurry, like the GP. And myself.
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How do you know a brick isn't conscious?
You can't know. In point of fact some people thing that inanimate objects have souls or spirits; that particular belief is called "animism". Even animists can't have an ethical prohibitions against breaking (most) rocks or cutting down (most) trees or hunting (most) animals. But in an animist society it's quite possible reasonable for there to be rules that make certain trees or rocks sacrosanct.
The question is what is the standard of empirical evidence should be d
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Every answer so far: we have no fucking idea how to tell, with certainty, whether any object is conscious or not. We have a pretty good sliding scale of confidence (rocks: extremely unlikely, crawfish: fairly unlikely, other people: mostly certain (with exceptions), dolphins: ??).
We don't even have a solid definition of what consciousness is. How can you say with certainty whether something has a thing when you don't even know what that thing is?
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If that's the case then how do Serotonin reuptake inhibitors work?
If I understand correctly, SSRIs try to inhibit the too-rapid re-uptake of neurotransmitters like Serotonin, Dopamine and Norepinephrine that appears to be behind most mood and anxiety disorders. We're talking about consciousness, sense and cognition, all of which require electricity (as best I understand it) to run the overall orchestration of many systems. Without this operational system there's nothing for SSRIs to do, so I don't really understand your question.
Cue the Kneejerk (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how I feel about this research...and that's pretty much why I'm all for this. We don't understand enough to be able to say whether or not this should be happening, and this is the best way we know how to move forward. This is something that doesn't directly harm anyone, and we have no reason to believe that any sort of consciousness exists in it. This should be an obvious win-win that could potentially benefit everyone.
Certainly, this is going to trigger all kinds of knee-jerk responses from a lot of folks. I get that, but those are also the kinds of responses that are regularly made in the absence of any solid understanding of what's going on. That's why we had limited stem cell research for so long. This isn't mad scientist war crimes type stuff. This is the best way to study the human brain without actually stealing one from an unwilling donor.
I don't know how we reconcile the fact that some people have a religious objection to messing with the parts that we're made of and the fact that there's huge benefits to be gained, but we can't dicker around and make everyone happy. Sometimes we just need to get stuff done so that we can say "Just be happy with your cure for ALS."
Re:Cue the Kneejerk (Score:5, Funny)
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That's very unlikely The "knee jerk response" is a spinal response to a sudden extension of the relevant leg muscle, and occurs in the base of the spinal cord, in the "lumbar" region. Without a full, functioning spinal cord, and muscles connected to it with nerves to train the response, you're unlikely to ever find any spinal responses.
Re:Cue the Kneejerk (Score:4, Funny)
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My first thought was to implant it in a mouse.
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I read that as "moose" and thought "my God, man! A retarded moose spasming all over the lab? Awesome, sure, but think of the mess!"
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No Kneejerk required (Score:3)
we have no reason to believe that any sort of consciousness exists in it.
Defining consciousness is an endless philosophical debate... but forget all that, it's a brain - something we know to exhibit the properties that everyone uses to define consciousness, how can you possibly say there is no reason to believe it is concious? what arbitrary metrics are you using to call it unconscious? because craniometry is pseudo-science.
I'm not sure how i feel about this either, and maybe it's fine... maybe we can prove it to be effectively brain dead but useful enough to observe chemical pr
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I'm not sure how I feel about this research...and that's pretty much why I'm all for this. We don't understand enough to be able to say whether or not this should be happening, and this is the best way we know how to move forward.
Do you think it poses more ethical problems than performing animal experiments on, say, mice? I do not think it does because adult mice are more advanced than this brain. Since we allow mouse experiments, I don't see why we don't allow experiments on cultured brains.
Re:Cue the Kneejerk (Score:4, Insightful)
I have similar concerns with the prospect of a strong AI. Not Chinese Room stuff like Watson, but if somebody actually did figure out a way to create an artificial consciousness, do you really think the first thing to pop out of the lab is going to be Mr. Data, all well-adjusted-ish and sane? No, the development process would be a series of failures. Insane, half-formed but thinking entities, terrified, trapped in a box, judged "not good enough" and deleted to make room for version 2.
It's horrific to think about.
Thought experiment: Assume God exists. Look at your life and the world. How much do you love your Creator?
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Not to invoke Godwin's Law but to dismiss moral concerns here as "knee-jerk responses" is a bit shallow, frankly.
As far as we understand (I'm not a brain scientist), we conceptualize that whatever makes us "us" resides entirely in the brain; not the spleen, liver, nor (despite general anecdotal experience from half the population of the other half) the penis.
We don't know *what* process activates "personhood" within that little clump of cells within a growing fetus, nor even have a conceptual yardstick agai
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I don't disagree with your points. While I wouldn't consider myself purely utilitarian, I also don't believe that we'll ever truly satisfy everyone. In light of that, and given that there are far too many unknowns to account for, I would argue that we need to take what reasonable precautions we can while making an effort to move towards addressing those unknowns. I'm merely arguing that there are some risks that need to be taken, carefully, and that it's okay if one of the things we learn is that we shou
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I'm not sure how I feel about this research...and that's pretty much why I'm all for this. We don't understand enough to be able to say whether or not this should be happening, and this is the best way we know how to move forward.
Your argument, then, is that the precautionary principle is never justified? That action should be considered right and safe until proven otherwise?
Just don't put these in front of keyboards (Score:4, Funny)
I couldn't get the brain you wanted... (Score:4, Funny)
I, uh, I dropped it.
Who's brain did you get?
Abby, Abby someone. Abby Normal I think.
You mean to tell me that I put an Abnormal brain into a 74 inch tall, 54 inch wide.... GORILLLA!!?
Zombies (Score:2)
Well, this will help alleviate the zombie food problem if they can scale it up to industrial proportions. We could even put them in head-shaped bowls and have large pens so the zombies are more "free range" like they would be in the wild.
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Well, this will help alleviate the zombie food problem if they can scale it up to industrial proportions. We could even put them in head-shaped bowls and have large pens so the zombies are more "free range" like they would be in the wild.
I prefer my free range Zombies to be fed only on organic, hormone-free food. That's why I use only post-menopausal vegetarians.
Question on everyone's mind (Score:3)
When will enter the presidential race?
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It already did, and is currently the frontrunner for the Republican Party.
A retina? (Score:2)
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Republicans are A-OK with this research (Score:3)
Press release update (Score:2)
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The! (Score:2)
Oh, nonono: you mean THE Ohio State University!! So as not to confuse IT with all the hundred other Ohio state universities!.
The, THE, THE!!!
What a bizarre type of monomania they possess. (Neat story nonetheless).
We're saved from zombies! (Score:2)
This reminds me... (Score:2)
Spock: Is there something wrong with the one I have?
-- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Western bias in consciousness threshold (Score:2)
There is a pretty heavy conceptual bias in defining what counts as consciousness, and as these borderline experiments continue it will only become more obvious. Outside of "the West" a much larger circle of reality is defined as conscious. That may include sacred elements of the landscape, celestial bodies, plants etc. The radical psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich held that everything in the universe was suffused with what he called "orgone" energy that tended to pulse and potentially spontaneously organize into
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By being perfectly ethical?
Re:How did this pass an ethics review? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: How did this pass an ethics review? (Score:2)
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Stop being childish. It's both annoying and boring.
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