Two papers that will soon be presented at a renowned US neuroscience conference claim to have implanted tiny human brains have been connected rats' minds.
This has sparked a major ethical debate, according to the Daily Mail.
Scientists are hoping to use this research to investigate brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and autism.
The human brain tissue called organoids were hooked to a rat's brain and blood supplies to draw physical links between them, the report revealed.
"It brings up some pretty interesting questions about what allows us, ethically, to do research on mice in the first place - namely, that they're not human," Josephine Johnston, of New York-based ethics institute The Hastings Centre, told Stat.
Adding, "If we give them human cerebral organoids, what does that do to their intelligence, their level of consciousness, even their species identity?"
Ethicists are worried this experiment could give animals enhanced intelligence one day.
