Braingeneers

What are Braingeneers?

We are a team of researchers that is experimenting with cerebral organoids — structures grown in the lab that replicate steps of brain development in growing embryos. We are applying modern artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to:

Uncover how genetic changes enhanced human brain architecture and computing capacity during primate evolution
Enable an unprecedented window into brain development
Develop the first scalable system to study the behavior of human neural circuits using stimulus-response-reinforcement experiments.

Big Brains

The human brain evolved dramatically in the last 3 million years, with the cerebral cortex tripling in size. Recently, for the first time, we’ve been able to determine the genetic modifications driving these changes.

Research Goals

To date, we have lacked an adequate platform to help us test the effects of these changes. The goal of our work is to build such a platform and use it to not just discover, but to understand what makes us human.

Approach

We are using our first-hand learning that came out of the Human Genome Project, our understanding of comparative genomics, and primate brain development to model neural activity. This approach is helping us to learn how the human brain evolved and how to harness its power.

The Ultimate Goal

Ultimately, we believe our work developing and experimenting with neural circuits in the lab will allow us to compare machine and biological learning in a profound new way, teaching us lessons about both

Funding

Our research is supported by investments from: