To coax human nerve cells in a laboratory to thrive, there are three magic words: location, location, location.
Many experiments grow human nerve cells in lab dishes. But a new study enlists some real estate that’s a bit more unconventional: the brain of a rat. Implanted clusters of human neurons grow bigger and more complex than their cohorts grown in dishes, researchers report online October 12 in Nature.
Not only that, but the human cells also appear functional, albeit in very limited ways. The implanted human cells can both receive signals from rat cells and influence the rats’ behavior, connections that “demonstrate more substantial integration of the transplanted neurons,”
→ Continue reading at Science News