Researchers at UC San Diego’s Sanford Stem Cell Institute have developed Graphene-Mediated Optical Stimulation (GraMOS), a novel non-genetic technique to accelerate the maturation of human brain organoids. By harnessing graphene’s ability to convert light into electrical signals, the method gently stimulates neurons to form stronger connections and more advanced networks without genetic modification. Published in Nature Communications, this approach offers a minimally invasive way to model age-related neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s more rapidly in vitro, with potential applications in drug discovery, brain-machine interfaces, and disease modeling.