The ability to culture cerebral organoids, or “minibrains,” using stem cells derived from people has given scientists experimentally manipulable models of human neurological development and disease, but not without confounding challenges. No two organoids are alike and none of them resemble actual brains. This “snowflake” problem has held back the science by making scientifically meaningful quantitative comparisons difficult to achieve. To help researchers overcome those limitations, MIT neuroscientists and engineers have developed a new pipeline for clearing, labeling, 3D imaging, and rigorously analyzing organoids. Called “SCOUT” for “Single-Cell and Cytoarchitecture…
