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Scientists say the human brain is two different organs [1]

['Mark Frauenfelder']

Date: 2026-09-21  

Researchers at Stanford, Caltech, and UC San Francisco say that recent experiments with mice reveal that their brains are actually two different organs. They extended this finding to human brains. One brain consists of the midbrain and forebrain, which control language and reasoning and are the seat of consciousness, while the hindbrain runs sleep, breathing, hunger, and heartbeat.

"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, the senior author of the study. "Our research suggests that evolution took two existing neural systems and pushed them together spatially."

Co-first author Rayyan Jokhai said this explains why labs have struggled for decades to grow hindbrain neurons: "Previous attempts to make hindbrain neurons likely tried to coax forebrain and midbrain progenitors into hindbrain cells, which our study shows is not possible."

"I was surprised at our findings because the word 'brain' implies a contiguous organ that likely has a singular origin," Jokhai said. "But even 500 million years ago, there were these separate neural systems, which now almost operate as one, which is very cool."

Previously: A single bacterium can learn, scientists gave sleep-deprived mice a memory boost without letting them sleep, and yawning moves the fluid inside your brain.

How I use AI. Fountain pen source: page 1. Pangram: rough draft, final draft.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/09/21/fountain-pen-brain-two-organs-2.html

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