HUMAN BRAIN ORGANOGENESIS

The organogenesis of the human central nervous system is an intricately orchestrated series of events that occurs over several months and ultimately gives rise to the circuits underlying cognition and behavior. There is a pressing need for developing reliable, realistic, and personalized in vitro models of the human brain to advance our understanding of neural development, evolution, and disease. Pluripotent stem cells have the remarkable ability to differentiate in vitro into any of the germ layers and, with the advent of three-dimensional (3D) cell culture methods, to self-organize into brain spheroids or organoids. These organoid cultures can be derived from any individual, can be guided to resemble specific brain regions, and can be employed to model complex cell-cell interactions and to build human circuits in vitro. This course will cover in detail the principles of human brain organogenesis in vivo and compare them to in vitro modeling using recently developed organoid and assembloid technologies.