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Human brain organoids record the passage of time over multiple years

Nature Brain Organoids Irene Faravelli, Noelia Antón-Bolaños, Anqi Wei, Tyler Faits, Abhishek Sampath Kumar, Sophia Andreadis, Rahel Kastli, Marta Montero Crespo, Mara Steiger, Daniel Leible, Elizabeth Zhang, Bobae An, Yaron Meirovitch, Sayara Silwal, Sung Min Yang, Alexander Kovacsovics, Xian Adiconis, Helene Kretzmer, Joshua Z. Levin, Edward S. Boyden, Jeff Lichtman, Aviv Regev, Alexander Meissner, Paola Arlotta 2026-08-19

TL;DR - Human brain organoids cultured for more than five years continued to mature and track elapsed time through human-specific endogenous developmental programs. This suggests that aspects of long-term brain-cell development persist outside the organism.

The organoids were maintained in culture for over five years.
Their brain cells continued to mature throughout the extended culture period.
The observed timing followed intrinsic, human-specific programs despite the absence of the organismal context.
The work supports brain organoids as models for studying long-term human neural development.

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