3 ms·
Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain
https://archive.is/1CFX9 https://archive.is/1CFX9
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-brains.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-...
Preprint of paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.02.662771v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.02.662771v1
- networkOne 8d agoA little misleading when they mention 'our' brains, yet the study outlines that even acorn worms have the same structure.
- Jimmc414 8d agoOriginal paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 (paywall) New Scientist Article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolved-from-two-primitive-nervous-systems-that-merged/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolv... https://archive.is/1CFX9 https://archive.is/1CFX9
- dang 8d agoThanks! I've changed the link above to https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolved-from-two-primitive-nervous-systems-that-merged/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolv... from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-human-brain.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-human-brain.html.
- ____tom____ 8d agoSeems to be based on the Stanford article: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-brains.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-...
- amirmc 8d agoWhich is a much better article
- jschveibinz 8d agoFor those interested in brain evolution and practical neuroscience/human behavior: Carl Sagan's books "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden" from the 70's-80's are good initial reads on brain composition and evolution. The Sapolsky lectures and books are also great resources.
- esperent 8d agoI'd imagine the science from the 80s is very dated now, no matter how good the book is.
- adammarples 7d agoThe comments in the other post on this topic had an article which slammed Sagan's book for being outdated and espousing debunked triune Brian theory. The article was called "your brain is not an onion with a lizard inside".
- srean 8d agoSo hindbrain is the OS kernel and forebrain the application server ?
- ChennakeshavaG 8d agoI think more like file explorer!
- fph 8d agoMaybe more like the baseband modem in a phone?
- saltcured 8d agoIt's a crude analogy, but I would say the hindbrain is more like the system management co-processor or controller that tends to low-level hardware features. The forebrain is the main processor. It does all the stuff you think of from OS to application, and has some ability to monitor and even interfere in the system management co-processor. Whether either of these things have interesting internal structure and functional decomposition is left unaddressed. This observation about the progenitor cells is a bit like seeing the BOM that says they come from different suppliers. I think it's also a bit of guesswork to try to reason out the evolutionary history. I.e. was either unit "in the market" longer and useful on its own, versus essentially complementary parts that just happen to have a divided supply chain! Intuition about evolutionary processes and life makes it really easy to assume the hindbrain is an older, legacy system that existed independently or with other long-lost companion units.
- srean 8d agoThat sounds about right.
- colinbrain 8d agoNeurosurgeon here: No
- dang 8d agoJust for context: parent comment was posted when the submission title was "Human brain is two separate organs, research finds". We've since changed it. (Perhaps the updated title is less objectionable?)
- ceroxylon 8d agoThe paper title sits better with me, even as a non-expert: "Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain". https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7
- elendilm 8d agoArgument from authority. Elaborate or nobody cares.
- ajkjk 8d agoreally? conditional on them actually being neurosurgeon, I'd place a lot more stock on it than on a random headline based on their authority alone. So I, for one, care. Argument from authority is a bad thing specifically when it's used to make incorrect claims on the basis of authority. But authority as a concept still has plenty of merit.
- carefree-bob 8d agoThere was a book in the 1970s called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, where he argued that ancient civilizations -- and he used examples from Homer -- lacked the current modern sense of self-consciousness. If you look at their behavior, they interact with some external divine voice that drives their actions, whereas if you read modern literature you see people being driven by an inner voice which they associate with themselves. This shift from the "bicameral mentality" of the external voice to the modern mentality of the inner voice was hypothesized by Jaynes to be rooted in some biological changes in the brain. At the time there was split brain research that showed these two parts of the brain function independently almost as two different minds in the same skull. See this 2007 survey: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6323702_The_bicameral_mind30_years_on_A_critical_reappraisal_of_Julian_Jaynes'_hypothesis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6323702_The_bicamer...
- ProjectArcturis 8d agoOkay but this article is about evolution hundreds of millions of years ago.
- crooked-v 8d ago> they interact with some external divine voice that drives their actions ...in a specific region, in a specific time period, immediately before the economic and then societal crash of the eastern Mediterranean that changed culture in the region forever. The hypothesis breaks down pretty hard when you realize he just kind of handwaves away people in the rest of the world not having any kind of abrupt cut-over in the styles of recorded literature that forms the backbone of his arguments.
- ViktorRay 8d agoAre you sure about this? If you look at the ancient stories in India you can similar phenomena
- carefree-bob 8d ago
- alexpotato 8d ago"You Are Two" [0] is a video that talks about what happens when the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain is severed. If you've never seen it I HIGHLY recommend it if only to show how weird our brains actually are. A good chaser to the above is Peter Watts talk on hive minds [1]. He was a neurology research and the author of the famous sci-fi novel Blindgsight [2] 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8&vl=en 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uwaw_5Q3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uwaw_5Q3I 2 - https://amzn.to/4xD40td https://amzn.to/4xD40td
- Dylan16807 8d agoWhile worth understanding, it's a completely different topic from the article.
- throwaway17_17 7d agoThank you for the link to Watts’ talk. It is a great watch and is certainly a great jumping off point for anyone writing fiction in the field. It also could be one of the most terrifying talks I’ve ever heard, but since it is eight years old, I am going to just pretend all of the research he mentions fell through and I have nothing worry about.
- bebeirjd848r 8d ago[flagged]
- pixl97 8d agoMichael Levin's work is an excellent place to look for this kind of stuff. His work around intelligence is amazing. Cellular systems and organs have intelligence capabilities far beyond the individual cells. A lot of it shows that humans can be very blind to intelligence. His flatworm experiments are a good place to start as he followed through with things they ignored in the experiments 80 some years ago.
- reliablereason 8d agoClearly.. this is not some new revelation, it has been the default assumption for a very long time, probably over a hundred years. Damage to the hind brain results in behavioural changes that are blatantly different compared to when the "newer" parts of the brain is damaged. The cerebellum literally even has a different color.
- Chance-Device 8d agoInteresting. Might explain why the cerebellum and cortex work so differently? I wonder what the two ancient nervous systems looked like at the point where they merged.
- hbarka 8d agoIt might explain ADHD.
- Chance-Device 8d agoMight it? I’m not sure I’m following you. Just because the cerebellum is involved?
- hbarka 8d agoIts a joke. You know they say ADHD types made great hunters thousands of years ago, because they can hyperfocus on that gazelle while constantly keeping their head on a swivel.
- rolph 8d agothis is not the claim made by the researchers generating this paper. this is thier claim : “We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain,” said Kyle Loh, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology. “Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions.” in translation, the two regions of the brain develop from different expressive states of the progenitor populations. the problem was difficulty culturing cerebellar neurons, due to a unrecognized disparity in genetic expressivity. the neurons were being manipulated as if they were running the same config.sys, and that was not the case. this work elucidates that fact and recognizes it as essential, to invitro culture of "hindbrain" neurons. The findings were published in Nature Neuroscience Sept. 18. Loh is the senior author. Graduate students Carolyn Dundes and Rayyan Jokhai are co-first authors of the research. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7
- afpx 8d agoDoes this help explain why the circuits that control emotional crying, which rely on connections that span the anterior, posterior and midbrain, develop?
- tehnoslow 8d ago[dead]
- adolph 8d agoWhile many comments are about brain lateralization, which this research does not address, an interesting aspect is how much it would lend credence to the "Triune Model" of the brain [0], which is generally described as discredited. The authors limit their claims to "the longstanding question in developmental biology of how and when different regions of the central nervous system diversify from one another." So folks wanting to see a "lizard brain" in there will have to keep searching. Edit/Append: Something I will keep an eye out for is how this knowledge changes the understanding of cephalopod brain dev/func. If hemichordates were evolutionarily later than protostomes like an octopus, what will that mean for the types of neural cells available for them? If octopus neurology is more like "forebrain and midbrain—which are both aNE-derived lineages," then does that mean that the "posterior neural ectoderm (pNE)" is evolutionarily later? 0. https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-lizard-brain-lie https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-lizard-brain...