Scientists are Growing Tiny Human Brain Balls in Petri Dishes

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.