Human Brain Cells Implanted In Rats To Study Schizophrenia, Autism

Studying how these conditions develop is incredibly difficult -- animals do not experience them like people, and humans cannot simply be opened up for research.

Scientists have successfully implanted and integrated human brain cells into newborn rats, creating a new way to study complex psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, and perhaps eventually test treatments.

Studying how these conditions develop is incredibly difficult -- animals do not experience them like people, and humans cannot simply be opened up for research.

Scientists can assemble small sections of human brain tissue made from stem cells in petri dishes, and have already done so with more than a dozen brain regions.

But in dishes, "neurons don't grow to the size which a human neuron in an actual human brain would grow," said Sergiu Pasca, the study's lead author and professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University.