Using mouse brains for research is standard practice in most countries, but there are some flaws with that practice. Most notable, not surprisingly, is the fact that mouse brains are just too different from human brains to be of use when researchers need very detailed information. Austrian researcher Juergen Knoblich decided that he should have better tools to work with, so he set out to do what other scientists have only been able to dream about: he grew miniature human brains in his lab.

Knoblich and his colleagues used adult stem cells that they programmed to behave like embryonic stem cells, turning them into induced pluripotent stem cells. They concocted a potion of brain-developing nutrients and fed it to the cells. A few weeks later, tiny brain-like “organoids” had formed. The little “brains” are no more than three to four millimeters across and display structures similar to parts of an actual human brain.

The practice of experimenting on human brain tissue may sound a little ethically sketchy, but these  Petri dish brains will never develop consciousness. Recreating the incredible complexity of a functioning human brain is something that science still hasn’t been able to do. But if the researchers could figure out how to make slightly more complex “brains,” they may be able to give some insight into why some fetal brains don’t develop properly and why others develop conditions like schizophrenia. Rest assured, however, that even these brilliant researchers are light-years away from being able to produce a functional, feeling, sentient brain.

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What was previously accomplished between two rats has now been done with humans. While that doesn’t sound like much of a feat, consider the fact that the accomplishment is brain-to-brain interfacing. A facet of computation neuroscience, this type of communication involves controlling another’s movements purely through thought. Researchers Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco replaced the rats in this experiment.

For the experiment, Rao and Stocco linked themselves via Skype from opposite ends of campus at the University of Washington. While Rao wore an electrode-covered skull cap connected to an EEG machine (the ‘output’ channel), Stocco wore a swim cap that was connected to a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine (the ‘input’ channel).

Both viewed the same video game feed. On Rao’s end, a command was to be completed with the keyboard’s spacebar. Instead of physically pressing the button, however, he merely thought of the action. Across campus, a sensor in the swim cap worn by Stocco stimulated his motor cortex, causing his hand to move in accordance with the Skype signal sent by Rao. The researchers hope two-way communication will eventually be possible, with theoretical applications of helping the disabled or landing a plane through an incapacitated pilot.

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The bunnies you see above aren’t just cute sculptures created by bored scientists – they could be the future of microscopic implantable bionic devices. The implantable devices could be used to create microelectrodes that can treat conditions like depression, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. The rabbits, and the coils below, are highly conducive, the size of bacteria, and can be implanted in the brain to send and receive electrical signals.

Before creating these intricate shapes, the team of Japanese scientists had to create a new type of material. Previously, the resin they used melted into shapeless blobs when baked at high temperatures, a step that is necessary to make the resin more conducive. They finally settled on hardening the material with laser beams, building the 3D shapes layer by layer on liquid resin. The resulting shapes experienced very little distortion, making them viable as the next generation of implantable microelectrodes that could make millions of patients’ lives better.

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Have you ever wondered what goes on inside a brain when it’s forming a thought? This video from a team of Japanese researchers shows neurons lighting up when they are active. This gives us a unique glimpse into a brain that is actively thinking. Alas, it isn’t a human brain – it’s the brain of a zebrafish. But the video represents a huge leap forward in understanding exactly how brains of all kinds function.

The researchers made it happen with an extremely sensitive fluorescent probe that detects neuron activity. With the probe, neurons light up when they’re active and we’re able to see a thought running through this fish’s mind. In this video, the fish is watching its prey swim around so the thought probably has something to do with wanting to swim over and eat it. The researchers from Japan’s National Institute of Genetics are now working on using the same technique to depict thoughts forming in the brains of other animals.

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If you’ve ever wanted to learn to play the piano or dance the tango but couldn’t be bothered to practice, the future is the place you want to be. A study published in Science Magazine suggests that the type of instant download-type learning seen in the Matrix movies really is possible. Using decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to tweak a subject’s brain waves, scientists can match brain waves to a previously-determined target state. The method could be used to more or less insert knowledge directly into a subject’s brain through the visual cortex, bypassing all of the months of practice and learning curves.

The method only works on skills that involve a large degree of visual performance. The visual learning areas of our brains are responsible for keeping track of information learned over time through practice and forming it into performance-based skill. So artificially inducing a certain activation pattern in the brain that matches the pattern of someone who already has that skill can actually make us better at something almost instantly. Oddly enough, the method works even when the subject isn’t aware of what they are being “taught.” Testing subjects’ abilities before and after neurofeedback training showed that their performance in targeted tasks improved even when they were not informed what task they were to be tested on. The thought of a future where we learn everything via brain wave manipulation is a little too creepy to ponder, but hopefully this research can be used to help people with learning disabilities.

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