- Prior to this work scientists use a patients’ skin cells to revert to pluripotent stem cells, and then placed the stem cells in a chemical environment that would push them down a new developmental path. Until now, we hadn’t been able to organize those neurons into anything resembling the complex circuity of the human brain.
- These tiny, 3D structures function much like the outer mantle, or cortex, of the brain of the person from which they were derived. The cortex spheroids grow to a state in which they express functional connectivity, allowing for modeling and understanding of mental illnesses.
- In a not-too-distant future, a patient suffering from mental illness might be able to have his or her cortex grown in a lab, thin sectioned, and analyzed in order to determine where the neural circuity has gone awry.
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