When it comes to big ideas, using seaweed to unravel the tendrils of human thought is a bit of a giant.
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The thought-provoking notion will be among the topics to be pondered at the second University of Wollongong Big Ideas Festival, on August 25.
The full list of speakers, which includes some of UOW's newest professors, has been unveiled and registration to attend the free event is now open.
Molecular and cell biologist Professor Robert Kapsa will challenge the limits of possibility with his talk, Tendrils of Human Thought from Within a Seaweed Brain. Prof Kapsa has been using seaweed products such as alginate to create small "brain" structures from the blood of a person with a neurological disease to study the function of their own brain.
"We're eventually going to be creating little bits of brain, or what we like to think of as brain, from the blood of people with neurological disorders or brain disease, or dysfunctional brain of some sort, and then making structures that are essentially maintained in a 3D format called alginate," he said.
"The seaweed gives us a scaffold that allows us to put the cells where they need to be and how they need to be organised."
In the long-term, these structures could possibly be implanted into the person's body to control activities that are not functioning properly.
"We could make little neuroids [nerve cell structures] eventually that could be placed around the body to control functions that are disregulated," Prof Kapsa said.
"Of course, at a later point we could use these neuroids to replace parts of people's brains. For instance, if you have a brain tumour and that tumour goes into a part of your brain that is associated with a particular function you will lose that function."
Other researchers on the program include Professor Robin Warner, who will discuss the political momentum building on a high seas conservation agreement.