Small Minded

You might boast of a big brain, but small ones have their uses. ‘Minibrains’ are tiny structures formed of human brain cells, which are used by scientists to study brain function, disease development, and new treatments. They can be used in countless investigations, and can even be grown from individuals’ cells, creating personalised testing grounds for treatments. Despite their comparatively diminutive stature, the minibrains’ internal structure was still hard to discern through the conventional approaches of analysing destructively-obtained slices of material, but a new study has visualised their anatomy in new detail, from the outside. Researchers labelled individual neurons and rendered other areas transparent, so they could see the remarkable complexity within (pictured, with elaborate brain cell projections in green and shorter ones in pink). Observing this 3D morphology will help future studies rapidly assess effects of drugs in many minibrains, hopefully leading to new, tailored treatments for patients.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video from work by Subashika Govindan and colleagues
• Tissue Engineering Laboratory, Haute école du paysage, d’ingénierie et d’architecture de Genève, Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale (HEPIA HES-SO), Genève, Switzerland
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, January 2021