By Darren Orf – Popular Mechanics –
Scientists trained a brain organoid to solve a well-known engineering task, and its success demonstrates the increasing complexity of lab-grown brains.
While creating organs sounds like sci-fi fodder, scientists have actually experimented with the idea for more than a century. For example, in 1907, American biologist Henry Van Peters Wilson demonstrated the foundational principles of lab-grown organs, or “organoids,” by showing how disassociated cells from a sea sponge could self-organize and regenerate in vitro. For decades, this exploration continued on in various animals until eventually, in 2009, scientists created the first 3D organoid using the intestinal stem cells of a mouse.
