Ever wish you could just swap your brain out with a spare one?
If so, sorry.
We definitely can't grow backup brains in jars.
But you may have heard about a study in which researchers at the University of California, San Diego were able to grow lumps of neural tissue that showed measurable activity, a little bit like an actual brain.
This kind of research raises some ethical questions.
But the good news is that at this point, it's unlikely the activity in these so-called cortical organoids means they're awake and having experiences.
And in this case, they weren't meant to be.
Instead, they're just a new and uncommon way to study neural tissue, which could help model the progression of diseases, test medication, or just understand how humans came to be the way we are.
In a study reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell in 2019, researchers grew small clusters of neural tissue, like neurons and glial cells, in culture.
And the neurons connected and started firing, apparently syncing up with their neighbors.
