How we’re reverse engineering the human brain in the labHow to build in space for life on Earth

Neuroscientist Sergiu P. Pasca has made it his life’s work to understand how the human brain builds itself — and what makes it susceptible to disease. In a mind-blowing talk laden with breakthrough science, he shows how his team figured out how to grow “organoids” and what they call brain “assembloids” — self-organizing clumps of neural tissue derived from stem cells that have shown the ability to form circuits — and explains how these miniature parts of the nervous system are bringing us closer to demystifying the brain.