Can we consciously create laboratory brains?

Science advances so fast that we can already imagine scenarios that previously belonged only to fiction.

One of them is create a brain in the laboratory and make it aware. But is this possible? What repercussions would it have? Could we consider it a living entity? With the following paragraphs we will try to reflect on the answers to these interesting questions.

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Can we consciously create brains in a laboratory context?

Great science fiction authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke or Philip K. Dick, they have been fantasizing about different ways of creating artificial life for many decades now. Today, those scenarios that seemed so implausible, are getting closer and closer to the possibilities of modern science. These approaches lead us to ask one of the most disturbing questions: can we consciously create laboratory brains?

In order to solve this question, we must first know the exact situation in which the investigations of the fields of knowledge involved in the question are found. To begin with, biologically, is it possible to create a brain in a laboratory? The answer is yes and no. This ambiguity is due to the fact that what has been created (and in fact is done regularly) are not brains like the ones we imagine, of human size, but small brain organoids.

These organoids are generated using stem cells and their size is less than that of a grain of rice. Researcher Alysson Muotri grows them in his laboratory at the University of California and does everything kind of experiments with them to study the capacities of these small groupings of cells nervous This scientist has been able to join the organoids to small robots, he has combined them with Neanderthal DNA and it has even made observations in microgravity, uploading samples to the International Space Station.

His experiments do not stop there. Along the way to find out if we can consciously create laboratory brains, Muotri has studied the possibilities of bringing these organoids closer to artificial intelligence prototypes. Even in times of pandemic, he has sought to experiment with them and test various drugs to find an effective treatment for COVID-19.

Further research on organoids, in this case by a Cambridge University team led by Dr Madeleine Lancaster, revealed the ability of these elements to attach to other organs to emulate brain functions. The experiments were carried out with rats, in which organoids were implanted between their brain and various muscle groups.

The researchers found that, as expected, the organoids were capable of contracting muscles, transmitting electrical activity for the function in which they were involved. His theory, therefore, was that organoids did not necessarily have to act as cerebral cortex, but could adapt to other types of brain structures.

Conscious organoids?

Once we know what organoids are, we can once again ask ourselves the question of whether we can consciously create laboratory brains. Precisely Alysson Muotri asked himself this same question as a result of another experiment in which his team detected a series of waves in these organoids. Their resemblance to those seen in the brains of premature babies was disturbing to say the least.

These were not random electrical impulses, but there were indications that said activity followed patterns and was somehow controlled. This was the beginning of a series of reflections on the part of the researchers, since the perspective of the experiments changed substantially. It was not the same to manipulate and dispose of at will a group of practically inert cells than a small nervous conglomerate that could be the beginning of a human brain.

Muotri and his team wondered if it was ethical to continue developing organoids to that level of complexity if there was a possibility that they might harbor a primitive form of consciousness. If this were the case, should they automatically be granted a series of rights that the other elements of the study did not have? Should they have the treatment of human beings in any of its forms?

The philosophical and ethical questions raised by the question were so overwhelming that the decision made by the laboratory was to stop the experiment., for the implications of the mere possibility of having created a conscious brain far exceeded the limits that researchers were unwilling to cross with such jobs.

Therefore, in answering the question of whether we can consciously create laboratory brains, we might have indications that the answer is yes, although The repercussions that this would have, at many levels, are so complex that the determination has not yet been made to continue this line of investigation to check it out.

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Disembodied brains

Beyond the creation of brains in the laboratory, there are precedents in which the viability of keeping an animal brain alive separated from the rest of the organism has been proven, in this case using pigs to check it. It was the experiment carried out at Yale University, led by Nenad Sestan.

The procedure was to collect the brains of several pigs that had been slaughtered in a slaughterhouse and submerge said organs in a cocktail of blood and chemicals and other elements that simulated the functioning of a living body. The results were really disturbing, since although it could not be demonstrated that there was a consciousness, neural activity was registered.

This other experiment opens the doors of investigations and scenarios just as amazing as the previous one, since we would be talking about the possibility of keeping a brain alive outside of a body and who knows if maybe in the future having the ability to connect it to a body synthetic. Concepts like resuscitation or even eternal life would seem less distant.

Obviously They are approaches that border on science fiction and all these hypotheses must be handled with great care, without losing contact with reality and taking into account the limitations that exist at a scientific and technological level, that could perfectly be insurmountable to deal with concepts as complex as the ones we have mentioned.

On the other hand, and taking up the conflicts that arose in the case of organoids and the question of whether we can create laboratory brains with consciousness, the fact of "resuscitating" a brain involves a series of debates on a moral and philosophical level that could delay or even prohibit any experiment aimed at testing whether this action is possible. Therefore, we may never have an answer about its viability.

The great dilemma

Returning to the question at hand, if we can consciously create laboratory brains, there is an important dilemma that we anticipated when we talked about organoids. The question is to elucidate what should weigh more when deciding whether to go further in this type of investigation and try to get something closer to a conscious brain.

On the one hand, we could take the determination to try to achieve it, arguing, for example, that they could be used to test treatments for a whole series diseases that affect human beings and that would otherwise involve a more expensive or riskier procedure, when done directly in people.

But on the other hand, one could ask whether those brains created in the laboratory should not have a series of norms and protections that prevent them from suffering any damage or harm, as if an animal or even a human being tried. It would be necessary to define what are the lines that separate another element of study and an entity with a conscience that must be preserved at all costs.

In any case, the very fact of verifying the consciousness of this hypothetical advanced organoid would also be a difficult question to do. solve, because so far, beyond the mere electrical activity detected there is no methodology that guarantees the detection of this consciousness. In fact, It is such a complex concept that it is difficult to establish the requirements that affirm that a being is conscious.

The University of California at San Diego itself held a symposium in 2019 with the aim that experts in philosophy and neuroscience try to put their common knowledge in order to reach a consensus on what consciousness is and what implications we have to consider to establish that an entity is aware. Of course, the debate is so complex that it remains and will be studied for a long time.

Bibliographic references:

• Farahany, N.A., Greely, H.T., Hyman, S., Koch, C., Grady, C. Pașca, SP, Sestan, N., Arlotta, P., Bernat, JL, Ting, J., Lunshof, JE, Iyer, EPR, Hyun, I., Capestany, BH, Church, GM, Huang, H., Song, H. (2018). The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue. Nature.
• Reardon, S. (2020). Can lab-grown brains become conscious? Nature.
• Regalado, A. (2018). Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body. MIT Technology Review.