# ‘Alien-cortical’ mice: Can human brain cells grow inside animals?

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/alien-cortical-mice-can-human-brain-cells-grow-inside-animals/
- Published: 2026-11-07T05:57:25+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-07T06:20:22+00:00
- Original publisher: Al Jazeera (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/7/alien-cortical-mice-can-human-brain-cells-grow-inside-animals?traffic_source=rss
- Topics: Paranormal, Weird & Viral, World

## Key points

- Human brain organoids grew inside specially engineered mice.
- The tissue appeared to aid performance in a maze.
- Researchers say the model could help study brain disorders.

## Summary

Stanford researchers implanted human brain tissue grown from stem cells into mice engineered to lack much of their cerebral cortex and hippocampus. The resulting “alien-cortical mice” could help scientists study human brain circuits and conditions including schizophrenia, dementia and cerebral palsy, while raising ethical questions about how such research should be overseen.

The team tried the procedure on 29 mice and it worked in 25; each organoid contained about 100,000 human cells. Researchers removed around 14 million mouse neurons and added about 4 million human ones, which grew to fill more than 90 per cent of the cavities and made up roughly half the brain volume. The mice behaved mostly normally, and those with human tissue performed better in a maze than mice without it; some transplanted tissue also developed rare neurons usually absent in mice.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.