Qian Lab Receives John Templeton Foundation Grant

We are grateful and excited to share that the Qian Lab has received a new grant from the John Templeton Foundation to support our project, “Genetic Origins of Individuality: Adaptive Learning in Human Cortical Organoids.”

This three-year project will explore how genetic variation contributes to differences in adaptive learning and behavior in human cortical organoids. By combining human brain organoid models with electrophysiology, longitudinal recording, and closed-loop stimulation, we aim to investigate how developing neural networks respond to experience, adapt over time, and acquire distinct functional properties.

More broadly, this work will allow us to ask how individuality may emerge from the interaction between genetic background, neural development, and experience in a controlled human experimental system.

We are deeply grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for supporting this new direction and are excited to begin building the experimental and conceptual framework for this project with our collaborators and growing team.