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Lab-Grown Brains Could 'Become Sentient & Feel Pain'

Lord Lucan

Lord Lucan

Justified & Ancient
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Feb 17, 2017
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I understand the need for scientific research and what if provides us. The ethics of some research can be a grey area or simply wrong for some (or many).
This story presented by Newsweek is genuinely creepy and opens the door to so many questions.

HUMAN MINI-BRAINS CREATED IN LAB MAY BECOME SENTIENT AND ABLE TO FEEL PAIN, SCIENTISTS WARN
In recent years, scientists have made impressive headway with organoids—clumps of tissue or bundles of cells that resemble a miniature version of a human organ. But as the technology continues to progress at rapid speeds, are the ethical considerations playing catch up?

A group of researchers is scheduled to speak at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago today to discuss the ethical implications of organoid-based research, The Guardian reports. They argue that some scientists working with organoids risk crossing ethical lines and could unwittingly cause their biological creations to suffer, were they to become conscious—and that some may have already crossed that line by creating sentient tissue.

It's never too early to start this discussion, says Alysson R. Muotri, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics/Cellular & Molecular Medicine at the University of California in San Diego. (Muotri is not one of the researchers scheduled to speak.)

"While we have no evidence that this is the case now, there are now very robust protocols that can generate sophisticated activity from these organoids. Thus, I think this is possible in the future," he told Newsweek. "I think we need to inform the society about the gradual steps of science, instead of taking people by surprise."
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Source: https://www.newsweek.com/human-mini-brain-lab-sentient-feel-pain-ethics-1466632
 
The headline certainly is a little OTT. At no point in the article does it even mention that a brain organoid would "feel pain". My understanding is that the brain per se does not feel pain. The scalp and other areas of the head do.

But definitely creepy thoughts come to mind. I often can't fathom why some research is done. I'm of the opinion that just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. The making of the atomic bomb is one big example IMO.
 
The news story is playing fast and loose with the notion of "sentience." Brain tissue organoids aren't engaged with peripheral sensory apparatus, much less their environs, so any feelings one might attribute to the organoid are limited to the state(s) of its own structure and substance.

It seems to me a uniform mass of brain tissues evidences no more subjective (much less self-aware) "feeling" than water does when it comes to a boil.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The news story is playing fast and loose with the notion of "sentience." Brain tissue organoids aren't engaged with peripheral sensory apparatus, much less their environs, so any feelings one might attribute to the organoid are limited to the state(s) of its own structure and substance.

It seems to me a uniform mass of brain tissues evidences no more subjective (much less self-aware) "feeling" than water does when it comes to a boil.
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Yes but the next step is hooking one up to a giant killer robot.
 
They do differ from your average brain.

Glance at an intricately structured blob of human brain cells in a lab dish, and it’s tempting to dub it a “minibrain.”

That’s the popular term for cerebral organoids, complex 3D tissues made from stem cells that are revolutionizing how researchers study neural development and conditions from autism to Zika. But the most comprehensive genetic comparison yet of cells from real brains and cerebral organoids, published today, reveals important differences between them.

Arnold Kriegstein, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues first cataloged the genes turned on in individual cells from different parts of human fetal brains at 6 to 22 weeks of gestation. They then compared these patterns of gene expression to those of cells from cerebral organoids created using several previously published methods.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/lab-grown-minibrains-differ-real-thing-cell-subtypes-gene-expression
 
HUMAN MINI-BRAINS GROWING INSIDE RAT BODIES ARE STARTING TO INTEGRATE

"In the new papers, according to STAT, scientists will report that the organoids survived for extended periods of time — two months in one case — and even connected to lab animals’ circulatory and nervous systems, transferring blood and nerve signals between the host animal and the implanted human cells. "

https://www.inverse.com/article/38240-mini-brains-organoids-rats
 
Thats daft; Brains are organs notoriously free of nerves

They wont feel pain unless you connect them to a nervous system (natural or artificial)

Pain is a great way to avoid damage. (You dont want your precious new synthetic/robot damaging itself)

Of course they might decide they feel pain in order to get sympathy/doss off work...
 
Analogue Boy said:
Yes,yes,yes. But what do they taste like?
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46kj8l.jpg
 
"Brains can't feel pain because they have no sensory nerves" is true enough.
"Only brains can feel pain - everything else is just reflexes" is another reasonable statement. If we create brain tissue that becomes sufficiently sophisticated to experience qualia, we have a moral responsibility towards that tissue.

Maybe tailored brain tissue is the future of artificial intelligence; there are entire squadrons of philosophers who deny that electronic brains can become sentient, so maybe (if we desire sentient AI) we will need to use brain tissue. The far future might be dominated by huge biological brains, encased in architecture - like the Fourth Men from Olaf Stapletons's novel Last and First Men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men#Human_species

But if we are going to shovel brain tissue around on an industrial scale in the future, we have a moral responsibility to ensure that the tissue is happy - or at least, relatively free from suffering.
 
eburacum said:
But if we are going to shovel brain tissue around on an industrial scale in the future, we have a moral responsibility to ensure that the tissue is happy - or at least, relatively free from suffering.
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We haven’t even got that far with chickens yet.
 
As i understand it pain isn't a thing as such, it's the interpritation of the signals from the nerves. If the initial programing of the brain lacks this there is no reaction.:dunno:
 
Anyone reminded of that Tales of the Unexpected episode, the Roald Dahl story with Elaine Stritch keeping her husband's living brain on the coffee table? She can't help but give in to the temptation of tormenting it in the end.
 
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