Meet The Scientists Connecting Lab-Grown "Mini Brains" to Robots

Alysson Muotri and his team have been toiling away in the lab for the last year and a half or so, obsessing over bland-looking, pea-sized lumps of cells. Despite their unassuming appearance, lumps like these have taken neuroscience by storm. They’re lab-grown “brains.” Scientists call them brain organoids, and they offer rudimentary 3-D models of the brain’s cortex — the outer layer where complex functions like memory, language, and likely self-awareness, play out &