Great news: we're excellent at curing mice of diseases. All this time we've been trying to find drugs that have the same effect in humans as they do in mice, but until now no one has had the insight or bravery to ask the question, "What if we just made people more mouse?" Exciting stuff.
There actually exist mice facial expression amplifiers (and sound clarifiers etc.). If we employed them, we could get a better insight on their quirks and difficulties.
The article walks the headline back pretty quickly. Parts of human brains in mice becomes "pieces of brain-like tissue" made from skin cells and formed into "collections of connected, living cells" followed by a line on how there's "no indication that what's being created here are mice that can think like humans, or a human brain in a mouse body." and that the human cells started to look and function like the outer layer of the mouse's brain as opposed to looking or functioning like a part of a human brain.
It's still kind of neat though and I hope it's actually somehow useful for something.
That story was so sad, reading it was like actually going through the process together with the main character.
The past few years I seem to be seeing more and more experiments with growing brains in laboratories. Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices? Not that laws ever stopped determined nation states or private researchers from pursuing knowledge - or profit, or competitive advantage - at any cost.
I imagine some would argue there is no ethical problem, because these brains do not experience suffering like humans do. But how do you know for sure?
> Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices?
Not generally, no. Most of it is by convention coupled with the fact that no reputable journal will publish your work these days if you don't go through an IRB for certain types of work. There's also the funding angle, with most work being paid for by one of a few very large governmental bodies and each of those having stringent rules about what they do and don't permit.
Basically pursuing certain lines of research would make you unemployable thus (almost) nobody does it. Unless it looks likely to turn a profit in which case you can start a company and try your luck with VCs.
Presumably by intelligent, competent, analytical direct consideration.
The non-layman should get a pretty good idea at assessment (in this case, "where is nociception and is it there" etc.)
Allow me a relatively distant reference, for fun. Prosecution: "How do you know the patient was dead at the time?" // Doctor: "Because his brains were sitting on my table" // "And can you know for sure he was dead?" // "He could have been alive, brainless and practicing law maybe".
Which wants to mean, at least: surely there are subtle non easy questions, but still there exist thresholds of competence enabling better assessment. (And subtle doubts call for subtle defences, to be non-gratuitous.)
Humans genetically-engineered with no cerebral cortex fitted with a whole bunch of computing technology inside the craniums - coming to a city near you soon.
Oh, wait, has that already happened, and you thought someone was going to tell you about it? They thought they couldn't fake all the head MRI scans to cover up for THAT?
Multiple variations of this reality may exist. I'd so read a thriller book about this...but none have been written, strangely enough.
So now we have found a way to use brain organoids by grafting and growing them inside mouse heads. Those Frankenmice will be used as a platform from now on.
I m looking forward to talk to the first language-capable Frankenmouse.
> While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans".
I feel like it's going to be difficult to characterize how mental illness translates to mice, even if you get human cells in there. ("psychiatric diseases" = mental illness)
Great news: we're excellent at curing mice of diseases. All this time we've been trying to find drugs that have the same effect in humans as they do in mice, but until now no one has had the insight or bravery to ask the question, "What if we just made people more mouse?" Exciting stuff.
> until now no one has had the insight or bravery to ask the question, "What if we just made people more mouse?" Exciting stuff.
This is making mice more people, but either way it's an exciting day for mice everywhere.
Not really. Soon they will be paying taxes just like us and I'm not sure they're going to like it.
Not really, since this is just inventing new and exciting ways to give mice more brain diseases
This is just inventing new and exciting ways to give mice more human brain diseases.
As if mice didn’t have enough of their own brain diseases!
There actually exist mice facial expression amplifiers (and sound clarifiers etc.). If we employed them, we could get a better insight on their quirks and difficulties.
"I must be getting smart to beat a smart mouse like Algernon. But I don't feel smarter" (Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon)
The article walks the headline back pretty quickly. Parts of human brains in mice becomes "pieces of brain-like tissue" made from skin cells and formed into "collections of connected, living cells" followed by a line on how there's "no indication that what's being created here are mice that can think like humans, or a human brain in a mouse body." and that the human cells started to look and function like the outer layer of the mouse's brain as opposed to looking or functioning like a part of a human brain.
It's still kind of neat though and I hope it's actually somehow useful for something.
> The scientists said their work, published in the journal Nature, was carried out with independent ethical scrutiny.
oh, I guess there's nothing to be concerned about.
I think you just misread that - the adjective independent refers to ethical, not scrutiny /s
Forget Artificial Intelligence, _Real Intelligence_ is coming...
(Background material: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Mice)
Does this remind anyone of that novel Flowers for Algernon..?
What sprang to mind was "The island of Dr Moreau".
That story was so sad, reading it was like actually going through the process together with the main character.
The past few years I seem to be seeing more and more experiments with growing brains in laboratories. Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices? Not that laws ever stopped determined nation states or private researchers from pursuing knowledge - or profit, or competitive advantage - at any cost.
I imagine some would argue there is no ethical problem, because these brains do not experience suffering like humans do. But how do you know for sure?
> Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices?
Not generally, no. Most of it is by convention coupled with the fact that no reputable journal will publish your work these days if you don't go through an IRB for certain types of work. There's also the funding angle, with most work being paid for by one of a few very large governmental bodies and each of those having stringent rules about what they do and don't permit.
Basically pursuing certain lines of research would make you unemployable thus (almost) nobody does it. Unless it looks likely to turn a profit in which case you can start a company and try your luck with VCs.
> But how do you know for sure?
Presumably by intelligent, competent, analytical direct consideration.
The non-layman should get a pretty good idea at assessment (in this case, "where is nociception and is it there" etc.)
Allow me a relatively distant reference, for fun. Prosecution: "How do you know the patient was dead at the time?" // Doctor: "Because his brains were sitting on my table" // "And can you know for sure he was dead?" // "He could have been alive, brainless and practicing law maybe".
Which wants to mean, at least: surely there are subtle non easy questions, but still there exist thresholds of competence enabling better assessment. (And subtle doubts call for subtle defences, to be non-gratuitous.)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-11032-2
Developmental xenocortication using human-derived organoids in mice
They're Pinky and the Brain...yes: Pinky and the Brain...
Humans genetically-engineered with no cerebral cortex fitted with a whole bunch of computing technology inside the craniums - coming to a city near you soon.
Oh, wait, has that already happened, and you thought someone was going to tell you about it? They thought they couldn't fake all the head MRI scans to cover up for THAT?
Multiple variations of this reality may exist. I'd so read a thriller book about this...but none have been written, strangely enough.
So now we have found a way to use brain organoids by grafting and growing them inside mouse heads. Those Frankenmice will be used as a platform from now on.
I m looking forward to talk to the first language-capable Frankenmouse.
Sounds like “the scret of NIMH” an animated movie from the 80s, where intelligent mice escape a science lab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH
Hook that thing up to the Torment Nexus and see what the next tech-bubble will be!
i was expecting for cat-humans but this will do
Narf!
> While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans".
oh, thank god
No, they are just grumpy.
ed...ward?
I feel like it's going to be difficult to characterize how mental illness translates to mice, even if you get human cells in there. ("psychiatric diseases" = mental illness)
I for one welcome our part human part mouse brain overlords.