Using “bio-inks,” researchers at Australia’s Monash University have 3D-printed living neurons—brain cells—that continue growing in a lab and are able to send and respond to nerve signals.
The following report is by The Trends Journal:
Bioprinting a combination of living cells and other materials, the scientists replicated the arrangement of the brain’s “gray matter”—neurons and their stubby dendrites that communicate with other neurons close by—and “white matter,” neurons’ long, trailing axons that send and receive signals from farther away in the brain.
Other investigators have grown two-dimensional cultures of neurons, but a flat arrangement doesn’t mimic the way neurons actually grow and communicate, the Monash team said…