Ioana Patringenaru, 28 December 2022.

Excerpt:

>A team of engineers and neuroscientists has demonstrated for the first time that human brain organoids implanted in mice have established functional connectivity to the animals’ cortex and responded to external sensory stimuli.

>Human cortical organoids are derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, which are usually derived themselves from skin cells.

>These brain organoids have recently emerged as promising models to study the development of the human brain, as well as a range of neurological conditions.

>The implanted organoids reacted to visual stimuli in the same way as surrounding tissues, an observation that researchers were able to make in real time over several months thanks to an innovative experimental setup that combines transparent graphene microelectrode arrays and two-photon imaging.

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>“No other study has been able to record optically and electrically at the same time,” said Madison Wilson, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Kuzum’s [Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering] research group at UC San Diego.

>Graphene recordings showed increases in the power of gamma oscillations and phase locking of spikes from organoids to slow oscillations from mouse visual cortex.

>These findings suggest that the organoids had established synaptic connections with surrounding cortex tissue three weeks after implantation, and received functional input from the mouse brain.

>“We envision that, further along the road, this combination of stem cells and neurorecording technologies will be used for modeling disease under physiological conditions; examining candidate treatments on patient-specific organoids; and evaluating organoids’ potential to restore specific lost, degenerated or damaged brain regions,” Kuzum said.

The work was funded through the National Institutes of Health and the Research Council of Norway, as well as the National Science Foundation.

Nature Communications, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35536-3