Studying Human Brain Circuits in a Dish

Study in a Sentence: By converting human pluripotent stem cells into neurons specific to different regions of the brain and allowing them to self-assemble in 3D structure, researchers successfully modeled human brain circuits in vitro.

Healthy for Humans: Human-specific models of brain circuitry can help researchers learn about complex developmental processes and disease characteristics, which could then inform the development of novel psychiatric therapeutics.

Redefining Research: These neural circuit “assembloids” enable the study of the formation and maturation of long-range neural connections and can be integrated with additional cell types such as muscle and blood vessels to model a diverse array of functions in the human nervous system.