The development of brain chimaeras – made up of human and animal neurons – is an area of research that has hugely expanded in the past five years. Proponents say that these systems are yielding important insights into health and disease, but others say the chimeras represent an ethical grey zone, because of the potential to blur the line between humans and other animals, or to recapitulate human-like cognition in an animal.
This is an audio version of our Feature: Hybrid brains: the ethics of transplanting human neurons into animals
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Can lab-grown brains become conscious?
First monkey–human embryos reignite debate over hybrid animals
The rise of the assembloid
