Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by hacker_9 on Friday April 28, 2017 @11:00AM (#14219887)

Title is an exaggeration, all they found was structures that looked similar to structures in our brains. They have no idea what these structures actually do, and even said there is huge amount of variability in the structures.

As an aside, this:

"They first froze the mini-brains and cut them into ultra-thin sections, which they mounted onto glass slides. They then labeled the sections with different combinations of colored fluorescent tags that are specific to certain cell types, and imaged the sections using an automated scanner."

Shows just how immature the neurobiology field is. I imagine that slicing, and then manually re connecting the slices in a 3d program, must be a pretty painstaking process. Not to mention you are left with no idea how data traveled round the structure. A code analogy would be having a huge codebase handed to you in little chunks, and you have to connect up the pieces by hand. And at the end of it, not even being able to debug it and see if things even work as expected.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by strainer on Friday April 28, 2017 @03:51PM (#14222533)

This correlation and mapping through ultra thin sections has been recently computerised by 'VAST' and has revealed unexpected nanoscale complexity in neuron connectivity.

http://www.psypost.org/2015/07/new-vast-tool-gives-neuroscie...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by hsdistefa on Friday April 28, 2017 @05:26PM (#14223188)

I worked in a lab where we had a similar problem reconstructing 3d images from manual sections via the same procedure.

Not only is it a painstaking process, but some slices are lost due to human error while sectioning and the tissue is mechanically distorted when placed onto the slides (squished between the glass and the cover slip).

The solution was simple, albeit much more expensive than sectioning: just MRI scan the organ.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by foxyv on Friday April 28, 2017 @06:41PM (#14223748)

If the sample is small enough you can always use an optical coherence microscope. You can get optical microscope resolutions in 3D of in-vivo samples. It's similar to a confocal microscope but with much higher resolution. Only thing is they can be dang expensive but nowhere near as much as an MRI.

You can also get OCT devices for pretty cheap. They use them in optometrist offices for imaging retinas.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by namlem on Saturday April 29, 2017 @10:54AM (#14226822)

Does that really work? Can MRI achieve high enough resolutions? I thought it couldn't image anything smaller than 0.1mm or so.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by agumonkey on Friday April 28, 2017 @11:37AM (#14220268)

Wondering if they ever tried to do input/output testing if that ever makes sense at the cerebral level of complexity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Lab-grown ‘mini-brains’ do mimic human brain development by Florin_Andrei on Friday April 28, 2017 @02:02PM (#14221660)

> Shows just how immature the neurobiology field is.

So then, what is your proposal for improvement?

[ Parent | on HN ]