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NUANCE. "It’s still a mouse brain, not a human brain,” says Steve Goldman of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. “But all the non-neuronal cells are human.” https://lnkd.in/d2TkhaZ View in LinkedIn

ARBITRARY LINE. "The team decided not to try putting human cells into monkeys. “We briefly considered it but decided not to because of all the potential ethical issues,” Goldman says. Enard agrees that it could be difficult to decide which animals to put human brain cells into. “If you make animals more human-like, where do you stop?” https://lnkd.in/d2TkhaZ View in LinkedIn

TURBO-CHARGED. "This does not provide the animals with additional capabilities that could in any way be ascribed or perceived as specifically human...Rather, the human cells are simply improving the efficiency of the mouse’s own neural networks. It’s still a mouse.” https://lnkd.in/d2TkhaZ View in LinkedIn

THE DREADED SPANDREL. “Before asking why a synesthesia gene might have been preserved through evolution, one first must consider the possibility that synesthesia may likely be merely epiphenomenal, and that the gene(s) involved may have served some totally unrelated purpose. It is also possible that the gene(s) may have been retained simply because they did not incur a great enough cost to be purged by selection, and could be an example of an evolutionary spandrel.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes this weekend on the topic of synesthesia. In this section, the idea that crossed wires in the brain (i.e., smells becoming sounds) can lead to enhanced functionality (such as memory) is explored. Is the human brain functioning at maximal capacity, or is there an untapped endogenous reserve? What will the natural evolution of the brain lead to in the future? Is exogenous enhancement the only way to increase capacity? View in LinkedIn

BROAD PROOF-OF-CONCEPT. "Transplanted interneurons have been shown to modify disease phenotypes in several rodent models of neurologic and psychiatric disorders, including epilepsy, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and anxiety." https://lnkd.in/dfXR-Jt View in LinkedIn

PROMISING RESULTS. "Studies in animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD) show that transplanted human neural precursor cells survive and differentiate into neurons and glia." http://www.pnas.org/content/101/32/11839.full View in LinkedIn

LEAP FORWARD. "The field of stem-cell biology has been catapulted forward by the startling development of reprogramming technology. The ability to restore pluripotency to somatic cells through the ectopic co-expression of reprogramming factors has created powerful new opportunities for modelling human diseases and offers hope for personalized regenerative cell therapies." https://lnkd.in/dMmyqzS View in LinkedIn

EXPANDED ENQUIRY. "More recently, a host of cell types have been tested in stroke models, including human bone marrow cells, human umbilical cord blood cells, rat trophic factor-secreting kidney cells, and immortalized cell lines such as the human neuron-like NT2N (hNT) cells and MHP36, an embryonic murine immortalized neuroepithelial cell line." http://www.pnas.org/content/101/32/11839.full View in LinkedIn

FUTURE PATH. "Fetal brain tissue transplants have been shown to produce some recovery in animal models of stroke." http://www.pnas.org/content/101/32/11839.full View in LinkedIn