Stanford: Human Brain Develops From Two Distinct Systems — SkimNews
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- Stanford Medicine researchers found that the forebrain/midbrain arise from Otx2-expressing progenitors while the hindbrain arises from Gbx2-expressing progenitors, with distinct chromatin configurations committing each to separate paths from gastrulation onward.
- Kyle Loh, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology, is senior author on the Nature Neuroscience paper, with graduate students Carolyn Dundes and Rayyan Jokhai as co-first authors (publication date Sept. 18, 2026).
- The team successfully guided human pluripotent stem cells into functional hindbrain motor neurons for the first time — cells that fired action potentials and produced proteins specific to neurons controlling facial and swallowing muscles.
- The same two-origin arrangement was identified in chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms, suggesting the developmental split predates the common ancestor shared with humans more than 550 million years ago.
- Jokhai said prior attempts to make hindbrain neurons failed because researchers tried to convert forebrain/midbrain progenitors into a fate those cells were never capable of adopting.
- Hindbrain neurons are the cells that progressively fail in ALS and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), and brain stem tissue cannot be collected from living patients — making lab-grown neurons a new path to studying both diseases.
- The hindbrain also houses neural circuits regulating hunger that are targeted by semaglutide, and the researchers plan next to trace the developmental origin of the spinal cord.
Why it matters: Researchers had been blocked from studying ALS and SMA in human hindbrain neurons because the cells could not be grown in a dish; with this protocol, labs can now model the specific neurons that die in both diseases, and the same pathway reaches into appetite circuits central to GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide.
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