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[Link] First almost fully-formed human [foetus] brain grown in lab, researchers claim
This seems significant:
An almost fully-formed human brain has been grown in a lab for the first time, claim scientists from Ohio State University. The team behind the feat hope the brain could transform our understanding of neurological disease.
Though not conscious the miniature brain, which resembles that of a five-week-old foetus, could potentially be useful for scientists who want to study the progression of developmental diseases.
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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
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Previous attempts at growing whole brains have at best achieved mini-organs that resemble those of nine-week-old foetuses, although these “cerebral organoids” were not complete and only contained certain aspects of the brain. “We have grown the entire brain from the get-go,” said Anand.
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The ethical concerns were non-existent, said Anand. “We don’t have any sensory stimuli entering the brain. This brain is not thinking in any way.”
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If the team’s claims prove true, the technique could revolutionise personalised medicine. “If you have an inherited disease, for example, you could give us a sample of skin cells, we could make a brain and then ask what’s going on,” said Anand.
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For now, the team say they are focusing on using the brain for military research, to understand the effect of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.
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Comments (40)
How the hell can he claim a brain is not conscious just because it's not being stimulated, when consciousness is so very badly understood to begin with?
Not just because it is not being stimulated, but rather because it has never been stimulated. That's a rather large difference.
I fail to see how you could derive that it's unconscious either way.
I am not sure what does "conscious" mean in this context.
In the context of ethics most likely something like the capacity for suffering, or for any kind subjective experience.
That doesn't help me -- essentially, you just replaced the word "conscious" with the word "suffering" and that does not clarify much.
Let's try it this way. Here is a black box with something inside it. It does not communicate in any way that's meaningful to you. How can you decide whether it's conscious or capable of suffering? What would you need to measure or observe? What are your criteria?
Tabooing doesn't work here, you can only taboo your terms so far before you've completely severed yourself from the semantics of your language. If you don't understand what suffering is at a visceral level then no experimental contrivance will clarify the notion for you.
That's pure hand-waving.
Look: "I think this rock here is suffering. I can't prove it, but if you don't feel it at a visceral level then no experimental contrivance will clarify it for you"
I'm not claiming that rocks or artificially grown foetal brains are suffering. The people involved in this research claim they aren't - if the meaning of that claim is unclear the onus is on them to clarify it. Until such a time we are all at liberty to filter that claim through our own intuitively constructed concepts.
We are, of course, at liberty. However it seems to me you don't want them to satisfy their own definition -- that would be too easy -- you want them to satisfy your definition, but for that you should have an idea of what you want clarified and what criteria do you expect to be met. Demanding that they clarify something to the satisfaction of your "visceral level" is still hand-waving.
Don't ever let this guy walk around when someone is in a sensory deprivation tank.
To me the biggest concern was
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The goal being studying brain in pain implies they will need a brain in pain. Seems like ethics should come into that at some point.
We don't even have the whole-brain simulations, and the artificial hell is already here.
As bad as the argument is, it's a little different when the brain has never ever been outside one.
How is it a bad argument?
We don't know enough about brain operation to conclude that sensory stimuli are necessary for ethically sensitive processes to start.
I wasn't sure if we were metaphorically talking about the foetus brain in question or a hypothetical human that's fully grown in an isolation tank. If we were talking about the former, we seem to have a fundamentally different set of ethics. With your clarification I assume we're talking about the latter, in which case I agree with you.
Saying that an undeveloped foetus brain isn't thinking because it hasn't received sensory stimuli is a different argument than saying that a fully grown brain can't think because it hasn't received sensory stimuli.
Tangentially, are those still used? There was a fad for them (especially combined with LSD) something like 40 years ago, but I've hardly heard of them since.
Sensory deprivation tanks (aka float tanks) are still a thing. Here's a business in Atlanta with float tanks. (I've never tried a float tank, so I can't speak to their efficacy.)
I look forward to the paper and the ability to know what they actually did rather than what journalists say about it.
For now, non-vascularized neural tissue isn't gonna be doing much or be very big, especially tissue derived from an animal with as thick and bulky neural structures as a primate.
If they claim to have multiple neuron types and brain structures, it seems that later developments could add the other key ingredients such as astrocytes and vascular tissue. Even then it may be one of those situations where there are so many just so dependencies that you don't get real brain functionality until you have just one more feature, and then one more, and so on .. .such that you might as well just skip all those steps and start with a fetus in a vat.
I tried to find the original scientific work online, but it appears to be so new it isn't, yet.
The researcher is Rene Anand, and the conference it is being presented at is the Military Health System Research Symposium, which is in progress right now. Perhaps there will be more information there after the conference. At the moment there isn't even a programme listing, and most of the information that is there is behind a registration wall.
Here is his university's press release, which mentions having been able to grow the brain to the 12-week point, and speculating about 16 or 20 weeks.
At what time is it currently thought that the fetal brain can be said to be conscious? If this brain-in-a-vat was grown to the equivalent of full term, with no sensory or motor nerves, how would we decide whether it was conscious? Or to put the real issue, how would we decide if it could legitimately be treated as an inanimate object for experimental purposes? How would a religious person decide if it had a soul, bearing in mind that it was created from skin cells, not eggs and sperm?
The aim of the research is to create model tissues for studying neurological disorders, but some further possibilities are obvious, along with their moral hazards. For example, give it some sort of sensory inputs and motor outputs, see if it can learn, and look at the effect on its structures. Have the motor outputs cause external effects that produce sensory inputs (think of a baby with a rattle), and watch it learn to control features of its environment. If a brain-in-a-vat can learn to do useful things, could it be practically used as an embedded controller for a complex machine, such as a chemical plant? Or a robot body? How intelligent could these brains-in-vats be? How insane?
How do you give an unplugged brain PTSD?
Guys, "The brain, which is about the size of a pencil eraser. . ." It isn't sentient, no matter what kind of stimulation or lack thereof it's been getting.
Now, can they make neurons from the skin cells of people with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and inject them into their brains to help with the disease?