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Reconstructing brains: A biological impossibility?

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Abstract

The reconstruction of damaged brain tissue is desirable because brain damage constitutes a major area of unmet medical need. In the view of some advocates, the cell therapy approaches that will lead to the reconstruction of damaged brain tissue will also enhance brain function in normal people. Although the meeting of unmet medical need appears laudable, human enhancement is viewed by some as a threat, but is brain reconstruction achievable whether desirable or not? This article argues that the prospects for true regenerative medicine in the brain are considerably exaggerated. Although current studies may lead to clinical advancement, progress on true reconstruction is very limited. I argue that brain reconstruction might prove to be an example of genuine biological impossibility.

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Notes

  1. This experiment is routinely performed with mouse ES cells, and is the ultimate test of pluripotentiality. It would, however, be unethical to engraft human ES cells in this way, so we have to take on trust this ultimate proof of the pluripotentiality of human ES cells.

  2. http://macklis.mgh.harvard.edu/research/index.html.

  3. For example, ‘It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years’ claims Henry Markham of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Quoted by Sejnowski (2010) www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-build-brains-like-ours.

  4. See for example www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5710718/Humans-could-regrow-their-own-body-parts-like-some-amphibians-claim-scientists.html.

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Acknowledgements

The author's own work cited in this report was supported by the NIH, the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust; the European Commission; and the Wellcome Trust.

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  1. King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Centre for the Cellular Basis of Behaviour, James Black Centre, 125 Coldharbour Lane, London, SE5 9NU, UK

    Jack Price

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Price, J. Reconstructing brains: A biological impossibility?. BioSocieties 6, 299–322 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2011.6

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