Researchers at Brown University have found a way to create miniature brains that could replace the real thing when studying the effects of drugs and even when experimenting on human brain transplants. The new technology was announced last Thursday and reportedly costs only 25 cents to make.
The recipe for the brain model include a small sample of a living tissue that is obtained from an animal such as a lab rat. The researchers' technique in creating the mini brains involves the extraction of cells with a centrifuge which are used to seed a cell culture. This process effectively creates a working 3-D neural network. A small sample is claimed to produce several mini-brains that is a third of a millimeter in diameter.
"We think of this as a way to have a better in vitro [lab] model that can maybe reduce animal use," Molly Boutin, co-author of the research paper, said in a press release. "A lot of the work that's done right now is in two-dimensional culture, but this is an alternative that is much more relevant to the in vivo [living] scenario."
Although the miniature brain is not alive or capable of thinking, it is close enough to the real thing that experiments with brain transplants, for instance, yield realistic results, according to Engadget. Watch it in action in the video below posted by Brown Life Sciences at Vine.
The university researchers say that their work is not the first of its kind. Indeed, a study announced in August demonstrated a similar miniature brain touted to have the same level of development as in a 9-week-old fetus, the BBC reported. But the researchers point out that their process is unprecedented because the technique is easy and cheap.
