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Can lab-grown brains become conscious?

A handful of experiments are raising questions about whether clumps of cells and disembodied brains could be sentient, and how scientists would know if they were.
  1. Sara Reardon

    1. Sara Reardon is a freelance reporter based in Bozeman, Montana.

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Cartoon showing organoids in a petri dish. One organoid has a thought bubble with a question mark coming from it.

Illustration by Fabio Buonocore

In Alysson Muotri’s laboratory, hundreds of miniature human brains, the size of sesame seeds, float in Petri dishes, sparking with electrical activity.

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Nature 586, 658-661 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02986-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 04 November 2020: An earlier version of this story misrepresented the position of Sergiu Pasca.

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