neural organoids—tiny clusters of neuronal cells that, cultured in a matrix-like solution in the lab, organize themselves into ball-like shapes. Researchers had started calling them “mini-brains”—an exaggeration, no doubt—but there was something undeniably creepy about watching tiny balls with human neurons firing and communicating with each other. Had a thought, no matter how garbled, ever fired within one such organelle? If we poked them, did they feel sensation?
