Department of Psychology, Algoma University, 1520 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, P6A 2G4; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, Science and Technology Center, 4 Colby Street, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
Department of Biology, Algoma University, 1520 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, P6A 2G4.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2021 Apr;25(4):294-304. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.01.005. Epub 2021 Feb 2.
Bioengineered neural tissues help advance our understanding of neurodevelopment, regeneration, and neural disease; however, it remains unclear whether they can replicate higher-order functions including cognition. Building upon technical achievements in the fields of biomaterials, tissue engineering, and cell biology, investigators have generated an assortment of artificial brain structures and cocultured circuits. Though they have displayed basic electrochemical signaling, their capacities to generate minimal patterns of information processing suggestive of high-order cognitive analogues have not yet been explored. Here, we review the current state of neural tissue engineering and consider the possibility of a study of cognition in vitro. We adopt a practical definition of minimal cognition, anticipate problems of measurement, and discuss solutions toward a study of cognition in a dish.
生物工程化的神经组织有助于增进我们对神经发育、再生和神经疾病的理解；然而，它们是否能够复制包括认知在内的更高阶功能仍不清楚。在生物材料、组织工程和细胞生物学领域的技术成就基础上，研究人员已经生成了各种人工大脑结构和共培养回路。尽管它们已经显示出基本的电化学信号，但它们还没有被探索是否能够产生最小模式的信息处理，这些处理提示着类似高阶认知的功能。在这里，我们回顾神经组织工程的现状，并考虑在体外研究认知的可能性。我们采用了对最小认知的实用定义，预计会遇到测量方面的问题，并讨论了在培养皿中研究认知的解决方案。
