Miniature 3D Structures That Simulate the Human Cortex Could Help Study of Brain Disorders

Material below is adapted from the SfN Short Course Generating a Functional Human Cortex In Vitro From Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, by Sergiu Paşca, MD. Short Courses are daylong scientific trainings on emerging neuroscience topics and research techniques held the day before SfN’s annual meeting.

A major hurdle in understanding disorders like autism and schizophrenia is our inability to directly access the human brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques allow scientists to broadly visualize brain activity, but cannot show the complexities of networks between cells. Scientists can study brain structure with post-mortem tissue, but not their function.

Speaker

Hiroko Nobuta, PhD

Hiroko Nobuta is a postdoctoral fellow in the neuroscience department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She completed training in oligodendrocyte biology with her PhD mentor James Waschek, at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as her postdoctoral mentors David Rowitch, at the University of California, San Francisco, and Marius Wernig, at Stanford University. She is now exploring gene engineering methods to manipulate glia cells to treat neurodegenerative disorders.