Video: Researchers Create Working Brain Model For 25 Cents

By R. Siva Kumar - 06 Oct '15 07:05AM

A new miniature brain to replace the real one?

That is what researchers at Brown University have done---at just 25 cents, to boot!

While studying the effects of drugs and even when studying human brain transplants, scientists discovered the new technology, which was announced last Thursday.

They took a small sample of a living tissue from a lab rat. The mini brains involved cells with a centrifuge used to seed a cell culture, which created "a working 3-D neural network". One small sample led to the production of a number of mini-brains, which were a third of a millimeter in diameter.

"We think of this as a way to have a better in vitro [lab] model that can maybe reduce animal use," Molly Boutin, co-author of the research paper, said. "A lot of the work that's done right now is in two-dimensional culture, but this is an alternative that is much more relevant to the in vivo [living] scenario."

The mini brain was not "live" yet it seems close enough to the real thing that can enable experiments with brain transplants, according to Engadget. Watch it in action in the video below posted by Brown Life Sciences at Vine.

This work is not the first of its kind, explain the researchers. A study announced in August showed a "similar miniature brain touted to have the same level of development as in a 9-week-old fetus", the BBC reported.

But what is unique about this new technique is that it is "easy and cheap".