Growing "Mini-Brains" in a Lab: Human Brain Organoids

Introduction to human cerebral organoids, also known as brain organoids or "mini-brains", which are beginning to be used for biocomputing. What are they?

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Note: The first line of this video was removed, "Scientists are growing tiny brains", because it may be misleading. Organoids are not real brains, "tiny" or otherwise. The term "mini-brain" has been criticized for implying human characteristics. This channel strives for objectivity, clarity, and accuracy much of the time, so difficult editorial decisions must be made.

Twitter:   / ihmcurious  

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:43 Growing Organoids
2:57 Minibrains in Science & Medicine
4:46 Giving Minibrains Psychedelics
5:26 Minibrains With Eyes
6:30 Can Minibrains Feel?
7:22 Looking For Consciousness
9:03 The Future of Minibrain Research
10:47 Human Minibrains Grafted Onto Mice
12:10 What's Next?

Music

Destiny Day by Kevin MacLeod
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Academic Articles

Velasco et al., 2019, Nature: Individual brain organoids reproducibly form cell diversity of the human cerebral cortex https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Linkous & Fine, 2020, STAR Protocols: Generating Patient-Derived Gliomas within Cerebral Organoids https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Linkous et al., 2019, Cell Reports: Modeling Patient-Derived Glioblastoma with Cerebral Organoids https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2019...

Farahany et al., 2018, Nature: The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue
https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/u...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Di Lullo & Kriegstein, 2017, Nature Reviews Neuroscience: The use of brain organoids to investigate neural development and disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Aguilera-Castrejon et al., 2021, Nature: Ex utero mouse embryogenesis from pre-gastrulation to late organogenesis https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...

Gabriel et al., 2021, Cell Stem Cell: Human brain organoids assemble functionally integrated bilateral optic vesicles https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.11...

Trujillo et al., 2019, Cell Stem Cell: Complex Oscillatory Waves Emerging from Cortical Organoids Model Early Human Brain Network Development https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2019.0...

Cho et al., 2021, Nature Communications: Microfluidic device with brain extracellular matrix promotes structural and functional maturation of human brain organoids https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Lancaster & Knoblich, 2014, Nature Protocols: Generation of Cerebral Organoids from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Clevers, 2016, Cell: Modeling Development and Disease with Organoids https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.0...

van der Valk et al., 2021, Cell Death & Differentiation: Building inner ears: recent advances and future challenges for in vitro organoid systems https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Lancaster et al., 2013, Nature: Cerebral organoids model human brain development and microcephaly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Quadrato et al., 2017, Nature: Cell diversity and network dynamics in photosensitive human brain organoids https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Armin & Pasca, 2018, Neuron: Building Models of Brain Disorders with Three-Dimensional Organoids https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2018...

Qian et al., 2018, Nature Protocols: Generation of human brain region-specific organoids using a miniaturized spinning bioreactor https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Dong et al., 2020, Molecular Psychiatry: Human cerebral organoids establish subcortical projections in the mouse brain after transplantation https://www.nature.com/articles/s4138...

Samarasinghe et al., 2021, Nature Neuroscience: Identification of neural oscillations and epileptiform changes in human brain organoids https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.11...

Nature Biotechnology, 2021: Green funds for lab-made breast milk https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...

Most other papers can be found for free on PubMed using the citations in the video. For further information, I can be reached at [email protected]