bgm05:donbluth:afreecuntree:omg It’s basically just as conscious as a fetus tho like don&rsquo
bgm05:donbluth:afreecuntree:omg It’s basically just as conscious as a fetus tho like don’t let this worm it’s way into becoming a pro life thing bc I can see it turning into that REAL quick. this thing isn’t grown from “blobs of human brain tissue”. what you’re looking at isn’t a frankencreature halloween experiment. this is stem cell research. what they’ve done is create an organoid - a miniature lab-grown model of an organ that has anatomy similar to the real thing, but isn’t nearly as complex. organoids have been around for a decade or so and the most popular theoretical use for them is in-vitro modeling. the aim of research like this is to create the best model possible of the human brain so they have something they can use to study neurological diseases. the aim is not to actually create a brain. they aren’t even close to doing that.the brain organoids can’t sustain themselves for very long and thus can’t develop mature tissue. it takes way longer than 60 days for stuff like white matter to start developing in a human fetus.also, reacting to light is one of the most rudimentary behaviors. certain species of bacteria - organisms made of a single cell that doesn’t even have a nucleus - will pretty consistently move up a light gradient to where the light is strongest. if they suddenly move out of the light, they’ll turn around to get back in. plants can do some really sophisticated and interesting stuff in response to light. i’m not saying that plants aren’t conscious - there’s been a lot of interesting research on whether plants can be conditioned to certain responses a la pavlov’s dog. i’m saying that reacting to light is absolutely not exclusive to more sophisticated animal brains. i’m not an expert on stem cell research or human development or anything. don’t take what i’m saying as gospel. i just really, really want people to take these sort of pop-science articles with several grains of salt. instead of summarizing interesting research with simpler language that anyone could understand, they get their kicks (and their clicks) writing sensationalist headlines. “blobs of human brain grown in a dish” “coaxed into forming”. this is some really loaded language! it makes stem cell researchers sound like they’re doing some Mewtwo shit, huh? when you see something like this, try to find the original paper if you can. use scihub to get past journal paywalls. or just read the title and the abstract. never take this sort of thing at face value. anyway yes i agree it is funny the organoid looks like “Powercry”. -- source link