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The technology used to create the “artificial human brain” that was created in 2013 to better study microcephaly and other brain disorders
The “artificial human brains”, first produced in 2013, have been used in research on brain development. The expectation is that this new tech could be used to test treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.
According to the scientists who developed the technology, the “mini brain” is able to sense its environment and react to it. Brett Kagan, the scientist behind the technology, claims to have created the first “sensitive” artificial brain in the laboratory. In the opinion of other specialists, the work is seen as “exciting”, but they say that calling brain cells sentient is going too far.
“Sentience”, a word used by Kagan to describe technology, means the ability to experience something and develop specific feelings from an experience. Even so, Kagan says that term is the best way to describe the discovery.
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HOW DOES A MINI-BRAIN WORK?
The purpose of mini-brains
The technology developed for the creation of artificial brains was produced for the first time in 2013, with the aim of studying microcephaly, a genetic disorder in which the human brain is born very small.
With that since the year of its creation, in 2013, mini brains have been used greatly by science in research on brain development, this being the first time that they are connected to an external environment and react to it, in this case a video game: Pong, whose objective is to move a bar on the screen to prevent the ball from passing.
Scientists grew human brain cells from stem cells and mouse embryos to form a collection of 800! The result of this, the mini brain, was connected to the video game through electrodes that indicated which side the ball was on and how far the bar was used to hit.
What are artificial brains for?
According to Kagan, the technology is expected to be used to test treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer.
“When people look at [human] tissue in a lab, they are seeing whether there is activity or not. But the purpose of brain cells is to process information in real time,” he says. “Assessing its true function could be useful for many other areas of research.”
In addition to that goal, Kagan also intends to test the impact that alcohol has on the mini brain's ability to play Pong. If you react similarly to a human brain, this would demonstrate how effective it can prove to be as a replacement.
