We usually think of growing cell cultures on a flat surface like a Petri dish. An organoid by contrast, is a three-dimensional growth in a drop of liquid hanging from a plate. This article describes various types of organoids, but we're most interested in neural cell organoids. While cycling Saturday I listened to an interview with Steve Potter describing work he and his colleagues have done creating neural networks in organoids and comparing the result with artificial neural networks. There's a lot of good in that interview, and I'll highlight two of the many points raised:
- artificial neural networks used only one type of neuron while in human brains there are many types of neuron ("it's like they're working with a factory composed entirely of lathes)
- there are different forms of neuoplasticity, including especially (for this discussion) glial cell plasticity ("Glia is an all-encompassing term referring to anything in the brain that is not a neuron")
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