alt Hacker NewsOur brain evolved from two primitive nervous systems that merged: Study
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this 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.
Seems to be based on the Stanford article: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-...
A little misleading when they mention 'our' brains, yet the study outlines that even acorn worms have the same structure.
Interesting. 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.
For 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.
Clearly.. 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.
Original paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 (paywall)
New Scientist Article:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolv...
So hindbrain is the OS kernel and forebrain the application server ?
"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
There 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_bicamer...