<\/p>\n
The effort to mix the brain tissues of distant species is being reported today in the journal Nature<\/em> by a team at Stanford University, led by neuroscientist Sergiu Pa\u0219ca.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pa\u0219ca\u2019s group previously showed that human brain \u201corganoids\u201d\u2014small blobs of neural tissue\u2014could survive, and even function, after being injected into the heads of baby rodents.<\/p>\n Now, Pa\u0219ca has taken things a step further by genetically modifying mice so their brains don\u2019t fully develop in the first place. These modified mice are missing most cells of both the cortex and the hippocampus, two key brain areas.<\/p>\n That creates much more room for the human cells to take hold, he says. \u201cHuman cells that are placed in these animals will divide, will grow, and within a few weeks to a few months they will take most of that space,\u201d he says. Pa\u0219ca says one surprising discovery is that the mice lacking brain tissue seemed fairly normal\u2014they walked around and squeaked. But they did have memory problems. In a maze test, they couldn\u2019t remember what parts they\u2019d explored.\u00a0<\/p>\n The mice with the added human cells, by contrast, performed better on the maze test. That means the human tissue is playing some role in the animals\u2019 cognition.<\/p>\n Pa\u0219ca believes what he is calling \u201cxenocortical mice\u201d could be useful in studying brain injuries. However, the report is also a dramatic demonstration of \u201cthe combined power of genetic engineering and stem-cell technology to reshape biology,\u201d says Carsten Charlesworth, a scientist who works in a different Stanford lab and was not involved in the research.<\/p>\n Already, brain organoids are being tested in labs to see if they can be connected to computers to play video games. Other scientists have proposed using them like replacement parts to treat stroke victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s most remarkable to me is the extent to which human neural tissue introduced after birth grew and connected with the mouse nervous system across a species barrier,\u201d says Charlesworth. \u201cAs these technologies advance, they\u2019ll increasingly force us to challenge our traditional assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Meet #mouse #brain #cortex #human #cells<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The effort to mix the brain tissues of distant species is being reported today in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1403,1404,13933,250,76,700],"class_list":["post-22146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-brain","tag-cells","tag-cortex","tag-human","tag-meet","tag-mouse"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/260915_HumanBrainTissueMice-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}