Human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world

Summary

Key takeaways New findings suggest the brain has preconfigured, structured activity patterns even before sensory experiences occur. UC Santa Cruz researchers used brain organoids to study the brain’s earliest electrical activity. Understanding early brain patterns could have important implications for diagnosing and treating developmental brain disorders. Humans have long wondered when and how we begin to form thoughts. Are we born with a pre-configured brain, or do thought patterns only begin to emerge in response to our sensory experiences of the world around us? Now, science is getting closer to answering the questions philosophers have pondered for centuries. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are using tiny models of human brain tissue, called organoids, to study the earliest moments of electrical activity in the brain. A new study in Nature Neuroscience finds that the earliest firings of the brain occur in structured patterns without any external experiences, suggesting that the human brain is preconfigured with instructions about how to navigate and interact with the world. “These cells are clearly interacting with each other and forming circuits that self-assemble before we can experience anything from the outside world,” said Tal Sharf, assistant professor of biomolecular engineering at the Baskin School of Engineering and the study’s senior author. “There’s an operating system that exists, that emerges in a primordial state. In my laboratory, we grow brain organoids to peer into this primordial version of the brain’s operating system and study how the brain builds itself before it’s shaped by sensory experience.” In improving our fundamental understanding of human brain development, these findings can help researchers better understand neurodevelopmental disorders, and pinpoint the impact of toxins like pesticides and microplastics in the developing brain. Sharf holds a CMOS-based microelectrode array chip. These devices contain thous...