Human brain is two separate organs, Stanford Medicine-led research finds
New research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that the human brain consists of two distinct organs that evolved independently rather than arising from a single progenitor cell. The study identifies separate developmental pathways for the forebrain and hindbrain, explaining why laboratory cultivation of hindbrain neurons has been difficult. This discovery opens new avenues for studying and treating brain stem diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
- ▪The research demonstrates that the forebrain and hindbrain develop from mutually exclusive progenitor cells expressing different genes, Otx2 and Gbx2.
- ▪Previous attempts to grow hindbrain neurons failed because they incorrectly tried to convert forebrain progenitors, which the study shows is impossible.
- ▪The hindbrain controls essential automatic functions like breathing and heartbeat, while the forebrain handles higher-level thinking and consciousness.
- ▪The findings were published in Nature Neuroscience and provide a new method for growing hindbrain neurons in a petri dish for disease research.
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| Original publisher | News Center |
| Canonical URL | https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-brains.html |
| Publication time | Sat, 19 Sep 2026 05:48:50 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-19T06:08:45.739Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-19T06:08:45.739Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | MyzzYYKmnP3g · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years. The discovery overturns a prevailing model of brain development. For decades researchers have subscribed to the theory that there is a single progenitor cell early in development that gives rise to the entire brain. This model suggested all parts of the brain shared a common developmental origin.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at News Center.
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