‘We can’t answer these questions’: Neuroscientist Kenneth Kosik on whether lab-grown brains will achieve consciousness
And then the big insight, which came from Yoshiki Sasai in Japan and Madeline Lancaster, was to take these neurons that were beginning to differentiate — cells relatively early in development — and put them in a drop of what's called Matrigel — a gel that can be either a liquid or a solid depending on the temperature.