Pallab Ghosh
BBC.com
Originally published April 27, 2018
Researchers at Yale University have restored circulation to the brains of decapitated pigs, and kept the organs alive for several hours.
Their aim is to develop a way of studying intact human brains in the lab for medical research.
Although there is no evidence that the animals were aware, there is concern that some degree of consciousness might have remained.
Details of the study were presented at a brain science ethics meeting held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda in Maryland on 28 March.
The work, by Prof Nenad Sestan of Yale University, was discussed as part of an NIH investigation of ethical issues arising from neuroscience research in the US.
Prof Sestan explained that he and his team experimented on more than 100 pig brains.
The information is here.
