Scientists have been using stem cells to grow tiny human brains for years, in order to study the organ’s development. Now they’ve grown one with actual, functional eyes…

In a historic first, hundreds of brain organoids grown in Petri dishes from donated human stem cells have sprouted symmetrical pairs of eyes. These rudimentary structures can not only sense the light around them, but send those signals to the rest of the organoid. The impact of this breakthrough is mind-boggling, to say the least…

“These organoids can help to study brain-eye interactions during embryo development, model congenital retinal disorders, and generate patient-specific retinal cell types for personalized drug testing and transplantation therapies,” said Jay Gopalakrishnan, senior author of the study.

You do realize what will happen, sooner or later…now that we’ve moved the bar this far. Someone will succeed in sprouting mouth and vocal cords… and the wee bairn will say, “Mommy!”.