MENTAL DISORDERS PART III. NOVEL RESEARCH TOOLS TO STUDY BRAIN FUNCTIONS:
BRAIN ORGANOIDS, NETWORK NEUROSCIENCE, REANIMATION OF DEAD MAMMALIAN BRAIN
“Our brain cells make us who we are.”
As I have stated before, I am not a neuroscientist. The details of these novel research tools are not for me to discuss. Therefore, I will simply summarize them, from the available basic literature, to satisfy my own curiosity, as well as for my readers.
BRAIN ORGANOIDS– Cultured brain cells from “induced pluripotential stem cells (IPSC) are premature and few in numbers. They have not yet matured, increased in numbers, specialized or formed neural networks to represent a mature brain functions. Some neuroscientists thought that these brain cells could be grown in a three dimensional bioreactor for a few months to grow more in number and mature enough to form a miniature three dimensional miniature brains. These miniature brains are called ‘brain organoids.’ These organoids could serve better to study mature brain cell functions. However these organoids are far from representing the complexity and networking of a mature brain.
NETWORK NEUROSCIENCE– This is a new discipline of brain science in humans. It is dedicated capturing and studying brain activities that create brain’s functions in humans. Network neuroscientists use a branch of math called, ”graft theory” to model physical pathways that build functional networks from which cognitive functions of our brain arise. Functional MRIs, AI, advanced computers and machine learning are part of these scientific studies. These types of research begin to bridge the gap between brain matter and the creation of brain functions and human mind.
REANIMATION OF MAMMALIAN BRAIN – Brain scientists have known for years that brain cells are very resilient. They can be revived, cultured to grow in an active state in proper culture media, even many hours after death. So, theoretically it is possible to revive the entire brain, hours after death, with proper perfusion techniques and restore metabolic functions of the brain for a long period of time.
Studies on mammalians brain have shown that there is fair amount of similarity between human and pig brain. Acting with this premise, developmental biologist Dr. Sestan and his team of researchers from Yale University were able to revive the whole pig brain after the animal was slaughtered, in their laboratory,= with their own different perfusion of techniques.
This accomplishment creates an entirely new media for studying the biological functions of whole brain in the laboratory. There is nothing stopping scientists in the future of doing the same thing, on volunteer people after their death.
It appears that there is a lot of brain research that needs to be done before we are able to discover the secrets of entire brain functions and hopefully the secrets of mental disorders.
As I see it, scientists are on the right path to solve the secrets of mental disorders in the near future. But, because of this extremely complex and difficult task, the near future is not so near as to be realized in our lifetime.
For further reading:
1. Eric R. Kandel. In Search of Memory. Norton and Co. 2006, New York,
2. The Kavli Foundation. Disease-in-a-Dish. 2011. kavlifoundation.org
3. Basset DS, Sporns D. Network Neuroscience. Nature Neuroscience 2017:20:353-364
4. Bertolero M, Basset DS. How Matters Becomes Mind. Scientific American 2019:321:26-33
5. Shear M. The Reanimators. The New York Times Magazine, July 7, 2019.
