Overview
- Researchers at UC Santa Cruz’s Braingeneers group observed temporally structured single‑neuron firing sequences in organoids within the first few months of development.
- The patterns resembled the brain’s default mode, indicating self‑organized circuit activity before any exposure to sensory signals.
- Organoids were grown from human stem cells and their activity was captured at single‑cell resolution on CMOS microelectrode array chips.
- Authors interpret the spontaneous sequences as evidence of an intrinsic neural blueprint that could inform models of how the brain constructs representations of the world.
- The study, led by T. van der Molen with senior author Tal Sharf, involved collaborators at UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, Washington University in St. Louis, Johns Hopkins, UMC Hamburg‑Eppendorf, and ETH Zurich.