The 4mm-wide structures, made using human stem cells, are incapable of thought and no use for transplants. But because they share the design of functioning brains, they may be useful for research and testing of drugs.
‘If you think about the brain as a car, then what we have created is a car which has its engine on the roof and the gear box in the trunk,’ said Professor Juergen Knoblich.
‘You can study the car parts but you can’t drive it.’
The breakthrough may overcome the limitations of researching human diseases by testing on animals, whose brains are less complex.
In one experiment, the researchers grew a mini-brain using cells taken from a patient with microcephaly. They found its growth was stunted – mimicking the effects of the disease. There was a mixed reaction to the research, carried out by a British and Austrian team led by Prof Knoblich, of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna.
Dr Zameel Cader, from Oxford University and the John Radcliffe Hospital, said it was ‘fascinating and exciting’.
And neuroscientist Professor Paul Matthews, from Imperial College London, said the study offered the promise of a ‘major new tool’ for understanding major developmental disorders.
But Dr Dean Burnett, lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Cardiff, was more cautious about the research published in journal Nature.
‘Saying you can replicate the workings of the brain with tissue in a dish is like inventing the abacus and saying you can use it to run the latest version of Microsoft Windows,’ he said.
‘There is a connection there, but we’re a long way from that sort of application yet.’
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