Talk by Folu Oyefeso, Loma Linda University

The human brain is a complex network of cells with special functions to control how we interact with the world. Within the brain, these cells are grouped into areas responsible for thinking, moving, sensing, among many other things! However, it is notoriously difficult to study the human brain directly and so scientists use animal and two-dimensional cell culture models to learn more about it. Recently, trained teams of cell biologists and neuroscientists have begun to generate three-dimensional brain organoids, which are small clumps of tissue containing the same types of cells we see in the brain. These tissues can model specific brain regions (e.g. cortex) and diseases (e.g. Zika virus infection or Parkinson’s disease). In this session, we’ll discuss how these models have been used and how they could be used in the future.

The Corpus Curiosum series was produced with the support of FENS Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET)