Thinking Small

Brain research can be a slow process because ethical issues and regulation make it difficult to experiment on animals. But a new method of making 'mini-brains', which aren’t capable of thought or feeling but have connected nerves that produce electrical signals, could speed up experimental research into Parkinson’s disease, strokes and other serious conditions. Just a small sample of brain tissue from a rat or other rodent is needed to make thousands of these little balls of grey matter, each about the size of a grain of table salt, with ease and low cost. The technique involves concentrating the cells in a centrifuge, then culturing them in a spherical mould. Pictured is one of the mini-brains, false-coloured to show different cells types – neurons are blue, astrocytes green and the grey white dots are nuclei at the centre of the cells.

Written by Mick Warwicker

Mick Warwicker

Writer

A freelance communications consultant and writer, Mick specialises in science and education. A science graduate and award-winning print and broadcast journalist, he was Head of Communications at Newcastle University from 2000–2011.

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• Image courtesy of the Hoffman-Kim Lab at Brown University
• Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
• Copyright held by original authors
• Research published in Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods, October 2015