Garrett Baker comments on [Linkpost] Can lab-grown brains become conscious?

[Garrett Baker]

Damn! That Muotri guy sounds exactly like a mad-scientist supervillain

For his part, Muotri sees little difference between working on a human organoid or a lab mouse. “We work with animal models that are conscious and there are no problems,” he says. “We need to move forward and if it turns out they become conscious, to be honest I don’t see it as a big deal.”

He even has a classic supervillain backstory

Muotri wants his organoid systems to be comparable, in at least some ways, with human brains, so that he can study human disorders and find treatments. His motivation is personal: his 14-year-old son has epilepsy and autism. “He struggles hard in life,” Muotri says. Brain organoids are a promising avenue, because they recapitulate the earliest stages of brain wiring, which are impossible to study as a human embryo develops. But studying human brain disorders without a fully functioning brain, he says, is like studying a pancreas that doesn’t produce insulin. “To get there, I need a brain organoid model that really resembles a human brain. I might need an organoid that becomes conscious.”