Organoid Intelligence

The Emergence of Organoid Intelligence

Organoid Intelligence combines human brain organoids with brain-machine interfaces to model memory, learning, and cognition in vitro, offering novel functional cognitive biomarkers with the potential to reshape drug development in neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease.

Training Engineered Human Brains to Learn and Remember

Human brain organoids offer the opportunity to closely recreate human biology, structures, and behavioral features of neurodegenerative diseases.

One of the core mechanisms being explored is long-term potentiation (LTP), which plays a critical role in how the brain learns and forms memories. OI enables quantification of LTP changes over time and in response to pharmacological modulation, disease-state versus control cell lines, and various environmental or biological conditions in a human engineered brain.

Reversing Cognitive Decline

Since 2003, more than 98% of drugs developed for Alzheimer’s disease have failed in clinical trials¹—largely due to the inability of animal models to accurately predict human outcomes. This is especially true for learning and memory disorders, which depend on the structural and cognitive complexity unique to the human brain.

OI offers a novel approach to testing therapeutic strategies that enhance learning and memory. This method replaces static pathological markers that often fail to reflect the true human disease state and provides a more human-relevant way to screen drugs and evaluate their potential to reverse cognitive decline.

^1. Kim et al., J. Alzheimers Disease 2022