I dont really get it tbh, like im guessing its.not a real brain but like a model brain basically. Im not quite surw how exactly this would help with schizophrenia research.
So there basically just small clusters of neural tissue developed from stem cells. They can coax the stem cells into becoming different kinds of neural tissue, like thalamus tissue or cortex tissue. Any way if they develop these clusters with cells from a sz donor they’ll hypothetically be able to see how the disease works in real time on the level of individual neurons and circuitry ect. There’s still tons of hurdles involved, specifically in SZ models, for example I think the oldest orginoids they’ve grown are about 800 days old so their circuitry may not reflect the circuitry of these tissues post break. Then obviously the orginoids aren’t operating in networks or processing any kind or sensory information. Still though, this is now an avenue we have outside of pure genetics that we can refer to when talking about potentially curative medicine.
I’ll say this now. I truly believe that within 30 years this disease will be very similar to hiv in that if it’s not outright cured the medicine will have developed to the point where we’re able to live lives as though we don’t have it.