Brain Balls
Radiolab9 Jan

Brain Balls

When neuroscientist Madeline Lancaster was a brand new postdoc, she accidentally used an expired protein gel in a lab experiment and noticed something weird. The stem cells she was trying to grow in a dish were self-assembling. The result? Madeline was the first person ever to grow what she called a “cerebral organoid,” a tiny, 3D version of a human brain the size of a peppercorn.

In about a decade, these mini human brain balls were everywhere. They were revealing bombshell secrets about how our brains develop in the womb, helping treat advanced cancer patients, being implanted into animals, even playing the video game Pong. But what are they? Are these brain balls capable of sensing, feeling, learning, being? Are they tiny, trapped humans? And if they were, how would we know?

Special thanks to Lynn Levy, Jason Yamada-Hanff, David Fajgenbaum, Andrew Verstein, Anne Hamilton, Christopher Mason, Madeline Mason-Moriarty, the team at the Boston Museum of Science, and Howard Fine, Stefano Cirigliano, and the team at Weill-Cornell.

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser
with help from - Mona Madgavkar
Produced by - Annie McEwen, Mona Madgavkar, and Pat Walters
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton and Rebecca Rand
and Edited by - Alex Neason and Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos -

Articles -


Books -
Carl Zimmer Life’s Edge: The Search for What it Means to be Alive (https://carlzimmer.com/books/lifes-edge/)



Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(653)

Driverless Dilemma

Driverless Dilemma

Most of us would sacrifice one person to save five. It’s a pretty straightforward bit of moral math. But if we have to actually kill that person ourselves, the math gets fuzzy. That’s the lesson of th...

26 Sep 201740min

Oliver Sipple

Oliver Sipple

One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. But in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second...

22 Sep 20171h 2min

Radiolab Presents: Anna in Somalia

Radiolab Presents: Anna in Somalia

This week, we are presenting a story from NPR foreign correspondent Gregory Warner and his new globe-trotting podcast Rough Translation. Mohammed was having the best six months of his life - working a...

12 Sep 201734min

Where the Sun Don't Shine

Where the Sun Don't Shine

Today we take a quick look up at a hole in the sky and follow an old story as it travels beyond the reach of the sun. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information abou...

23 Aug 201732min

Revising the Fault Line

Revising the Fault Line

A new tussle over an old story, and some long-held beliefs, with neurologist and author Robert Sapolsky. Four years ago, we did a story about a man with a starling obsession that made us question our ...

27 Juni 201747min

The Gondolier

The Gondolier

What happens when doing what you want to do means giving up who you really are?  We travel to Venice, Italy with reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad, where they meet gondolier Alex Hai. On the wi...

15 Juni 201754min

The Radio Lab

The Radio Lab

15 years ago the very first episode of Radiolab, fittingly called "Firsts," hit the airwaves. It was a 3-hour long collection of documentaries and musings produced by a solitary sleep-deprived produce...

26 Maj 201740min

Null and Void

Null and Void

Today, a hidden power that is either the cornerstone of our democracy or a trapdoor to anarchy.   Should a juror be able to ignore the law? From a Quaker prayer meeting in the streets of London, to ri...

12 Maj 201750min

Populärt inom Vetenskap

dumma-manniskor
allt-du-velat-veta
p3-dystopia
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
rss-ufobortom-rimligt-tvivel
rss-vetenskapsradion
rss-vetenskapsradion-2
rss-spraket
det-morka-psyket
svd-nyhetsartiklar
medicinvetarna
paranormalt-med-caroline-giertz
bildningspodden
sexet
hacka-livet
naturmorgon
rss-odla
barnpsykologerna
vetenskapsradion
halsorevolutionen