'No other study has been able to record optically and electrically at the same time.'
Engineers and neuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown for the first time that mice implanted with human brain organoids have functional connectivity to their cortex and respond to externalA novel experimental setup that combines transparent graphene microelectrode arrays and two-photon imaging allowed researchers to make this observation over a period of months in real time.
Led by Duygu Kuzum, a faculty member in the University of California San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team collaborated with Anna Devor’s lab at Boston University, besides Alysson R. Muotri’s lab at UC San Diego; and Fred H. Gage’s lab at the Salk Institute. The researchers observed electrical activity in the electrode channels above the organoids showing that the organoids were reacting to the stimulus in the same way as surrounding tissue.“No other study has been able to record optically and electrically at the same time,” said Madison Wilson, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Kuzum’s research group at UC San Diego.
“This experimental setup opens up unprecedented opportunities for investigations of human neural network-level dysfunctions underlying developmental brain diseases,” said Kuzum.While using two-photon microscopy on the mice with implanted organoids, researchers gave the mice a visual stimulation using an optical white light LED. The organoids’ electrode channels showed electrical activity, indicating that they were responding to the stimuli in a manner similar to neighboring tissue.
“We envision that, further along the road, this combination of stem cells and neurorecording technologies will be used for modeling disease under physiological conditions; examining candidate treatments on patient-specific organoids; and evaluating organoids’ potential to restore specific lost, degenerated or damaged brain regions,” Kuzum said.Human cortical organoids, three-dimensional neuronal cultures, are emerging as powerful tools to study brain development and dysfunction.
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