This probably isn’t the mind control you’re thinking of

Move over "hare-brained," there's a new brain-related idiom in town: "rat-brained." But according to a new study published yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, it's less of an insult – and more of a pretty-cool compliment.

​​​​🐀 The discovery: After neuroscientists at Stanford University transplanted specialized human brain cells into newborn rats, the human cells integrated with the rat tissue and continued to mature, forming new connections and eventually growing to cover nearly 20% of the animals’ entire brains.

🧠 Background… In biology, it’s notoriously difficult to study the early development of the human brain due to it being “virtually impossible” to acquire samples, per Stat News. (Which makes sense, if you think about it.🤔)

Thus, for decades, scientists had to rely on indirect clues from experiments carried out on other animals – until 2013, when neurobiologist Madeline Lancaster discovered human stem cells can grow into organoids, aka small spheres of brain tissue, when placed in the right nutrient solution.

• But in the years since, researchers learned brain organoids grown in the lab don’t reach the same size or make the same connections as normal human brains. So they began searching for friendlier surroundings – hence, the newborn rats.

​​​​👀 Looking ahead… The rat-brained Stanford researchers said their novel method can be used in future experiments to investigate the root causes of human brain disorders like autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and more.