A new study led by Stanford Medicine found the brain is two separate organs adjacent to one another. The finding could aid research into devastating neurological diseases.
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 could help explain why scientists have struggled for decades to grow certain types of brain cells in the laboratory — and it opens new avenues for studying devastating diseases that affect the brain stem, such as spinal muscular atrophy (also known as SMA) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease).
“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.”
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.