Activity-induced instabilities of brain organoids

TL;DR

This paper investigates how cellular activity within brain organoids can induce hydrodynamic instabilities, revealing that active stress significantly contributes to surface deformations, a factor previously underexplored.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical and numerical framework to study activity-induced instabilities, highlighting the role of active stress in surface deformations of brain organoids.

Findings

Active stress contributes to surface deformations.

Hydrodynamic instabilities can be analytically modeled.

Cell activity plays a crucial role in organoid morphology.

Abstract

We present an analytical and numerical investigation of the activity-induced hydrodynamic instabilities in model brain organoids. While several mechanisms have been introduced to explain the experimental observation of surface instabilities in brain organoids, the role of activity has been largely overlooked. Our results show that the active stress generated by the cells can be a, previously overlooked, contributor to the emergence of surface deformations in brain organoids.