Growing Brains (on Petri dishes, in Vienna, with differentiated areas and even a retina)

I don't normally use my blog to comment on news or such, but this is really important.

This is a Petri-dish-grown-HUMAN-brain

 (A cross section of it, actually.)

Scientists in Vienna have actually build an in-vitro version of A HUMAN BRAIN on a petri dish out of stem cells, which they call CEREBRAL ORGANOIDS. Here's how:

And, as a brain that prizes itself ot being a brain, it has differentiated areas such as an inmature retina, a dorsal cortex and a ventral forebrain.

(the white arrow points to the ventricules and the black arrow points at the pigmented inmature retina)

(differentiated areas, compared to control) 

(there are even meninges!!!)

All images taken from Nature

Here's the original paper (i haven't read it, haven't got 30 euros to spare)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12517.html

If you don't have 30 euros either, here's a note CNET made out of it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57600553-76/scientists-raise-mini-human-brain-in-a-petri-dish/

And another note, this time from Popular Science, with extracts of the press conference lead investigator Juergen Knoblick gave
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/whoa-scientists-grow-brain-dish?src=SOC&dom=tw

Click away.