Only one side of the rat brain has human cells in it, so it doesn't start taking on human attributes, the way a primate might. Plus, there's plenty to learn just from the work in rats, he said.

Pleasant tactile stimulation drives social bonding in many animal species, especially mammals. Tactile stimulation forms the ...

Rats respond to human touch with joy, revealing how physical connection may build trust across species and support ...

The trick is that the brain cells, known as organoids, don't live in a human's head - they live in a rat's. "And so we've done this by transplanting the organoids, early in the developing rat.

The rats’ brains integrated the human tissue and put it to work. It wasn’t quite a Frankenstein-esque brain transplant, but it is remarkable progress in the field of lab-grown mini-brains.

These human-rat brain hybrids could be used to study diseases like autism and schizophrenia, potentially marking a major turning point in scientists’ ability to develop effective treatments.

The human organoids were apparently sending messages to the reward-seeking regions of the rats’ brains. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) These species-blending experiments raise provocative ethical questions.

The human neurons forged direct connections with the rats’ thalamus, a region deep in the brain that relays multiple sensory inputs to the cortex. When scientists moved the whiskers of the rat ...

"The rat tissue is just pushed aside," he says. "But now you also have a group of human cells that are integrating into the circuitry." The human cells begin to make connections with rat cells.

These human/rat brain hybrids already have yielded some new understanding of Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic condition strongly associated with autism and epilepsy, the team noted.

Human brain “organoids” wired themselves into rats’ nervous systems, influencing the animals’ sensations and behaviors. By Carl Zimmer Scientists have successfully transplanted clusters of ...