Thread

Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain

664 points · 258 comments · emigre

itvision · 1789800711 · focus · HN ↗
What a way to oversell the discovery.
The reality is:
```
    * Different brain regions have different functions: ancient knowledge.
    * Different regions contain distinct cell types and molecular programs: also well established.
    * Anterior and posterior brain structures may trace back to fundamentally separate progenitor lineages that were independently specified very early in evolution and development: that&#x27;s the interesting new result.
```
The headline should have been: "Human forebrain and hindbrain arise from distinct embryonic progenitor lineages" - not that we have "two organs" in the brain.
1. t-writescode · 1789801067 · focus · HN ↗
  I mean, I learned a bunch of neat new stuff, so I’m excited!
2. sandeepkd · 1789801139 · focus · HN ↗
  Though I agree with the detailed differentiation, still for the headline purpose a generic one that resonates with people easily isn't a bad choice
  1. [deleted] · 1789801435 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. jibal · 1789802618 · focus · HN ↗
    Lying is always a bad choice. The paper in Nature says
    "Hence, we postulate the brain is a composite organ emanating from two lineage-restricted progenitors; these dual progenitors may be evolutionarily conserved across 550 million years from hemichordates to mammals."
    KajMagnus · 1789805659 · focus · HN ↗
    If they had written instead:
    "Human brain was two separate organs"
    Then, both attention grabbig and true?
    b112 · 1789807039 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably not, because by the time hominids were a thing, it was one.
    (if I'm reading parent poster correctly)
    bryanrasmussen · 1789807705 · focus · HN ↗
    Human Brain Evolved From Two Separate Organs.
    nextaccountic · 1789807122 · focus · HN ↗
    Are there other composite organs?
    hulitu · 1789808017 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, but this is left for the next years because they give only one Nobel preis per year.
    thaumasiotes · 1789809991 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophore" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophore
    mcherm · 1789810938 · focus · HN ↗
    That isn't even remotely related to the parent question. Organisms =/= Organs.
    thaumasiotes · 1789822239 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you think siphonophores don't have organs?
    grvbck · 1789811008 · focus · HN ↗
    Does the adrenal gland count?
  3. TeMPOraL · 1789810162 · focus · HN ↗
    I think "Human brain evolved from two separate organs" would've been more accurate and sufficiently simple/short for a headline, but I guess it won't fly either due to political reasons.
    HelloImSteven · 1789818866 · focus · HN ↗
    But the evolution isn’t necessarily the important part, it’s the two parts having separate development processes in modern day humans that is notable.
    TeMPOraL · 1789822959 · focus · HN ↗
    You mean like, "assembled from two separate components"?
    sdenton4 · 1789827771 · focus · HN ↗
    More like, they are two separate components, with some interwiring. Components, which we might also call organs. Two of them.
    TeMPOraL · 1789936280 · focus · HN ↗
    My objection is with the word "organs", which for everyone except maybe biologists and doctors (depending on the specialist definition of "organ") connote the developed piece of machinery inside a living thing. Not the transient state while it's still gestating.
    sdenton4 · 1790014549 · focus · HN ↗
    Organs are all interconnected as well. The hind brain and fore brain take on different tasks, as we've known for ages. I don't really have a problem calling them different organs.
    locknitpicker · 1789824038 · focus · HN ↗
    > I think "Human brain evolved from two separate organs" would've been more accurate and sufficiently simple/short for a headline, but I guess it won't fly either due to political reasons.
    I don't agree. For that you need to distort the definition of what an organ is to comply the requirement for two separate organs with distinct origin, genetic, and biochemical traits, and different function and responsibilities to somehow remain classified as the same organ.
3. lucideer · 1789801887 · focus · HN ↗
  Given the parallel example cited in the article of jellyfish having two spatially separate organs, & the subsequent speculation that our own ancestors could also have had spacially separate anterior & posterior masses, the title doesn't really seem unreasonable in its hyperbole.
  While it might not be perfectly accurate it's hardly misleading.
  1. stymaar · 1789802377 · focus · HN ↗
    I found the title confusing, at the very least because it can be argued that the two brain hemispheres are two organs already, as they operate independently when severed from each other.
    finghin · 1789815685 · focus · HN ↗
    Totally valid point just as both kidneys are separate organs
    foo-bar-bat · 1789823685 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not a good analogy, because both kidneys do the same thing and we don't need both of them to live.
    Whereas the left and right brain hemispheres do different things that enable our species to be what it now is; which is more similar to what the article calls hind and fore/front brains, which again do different things that we wouldn't be us without. We would still be human if we had only one kidney the way we have only one bladder or one pancreas.
    Kidneys are more like say lungs, gonads, breasts, or nostrils in that we have +1 extra; but the benefit created by multiplicity is ~doubling or capacity and resilience to local disease and random injury-- not a profound functionality. (Like is created by the second eye or second leg.) Of these, the second breast is radically more useful than the second kidney, and is probably a special case as it changes how we live so evolved.
    evilduck · 1789825071 · focus · HN ↗
    The right and left hemispheres do different things… unless you had a hemispherectomy as an infant and then one half is able to mostly perform the duties of both.
    stymaar · 1789828068 · focus · HN ↗
    > hemispherectomy
    TIL, gosh!
    zdragnar · 1789833935 · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder if we would have been capable of endurance hunting without both lungs. I suspect that changing that would have very drastically changed human development.
    finghin · 1789852318 · focus · HN ↗
    I see the point, and understood it when I wrote my comment. However, as far as I know (and I could be wrong), there is no characteristic of either cerebral hemisphere determined at the embryonic stage that differentiates one from the other. As such the two hemispheres become functionally distinct but are not functionally distinct in principle or by virtue of being left or right.
    Also, as others point out, hemispherotomies and -ectomies and to a lesser extent corpus callosotomies show that neither hemisphere nor their intercommunicative ability are strictly necessary for brain function. Yes, for ideal function, but that can be said of kidneys too.
    Do add to this if you can argue against it.
  2. amelius · 1789845895 · focus · HN ↗
    Humans also have a gut brain. So maybe we have 3 seperate brains?
    The most important question: are they all conscious?
4. lovich · 1789803422 · focus · HN ↗
  Additionally the only images in the linked article are also face pics of the researchers instead of anything on the information about said research.
  I want to trust science and dislike anti vaxxers but it’s difficult to argue against them when researchers act like the caricature they are mocked as.
  Self aggrandizing articles with misleading headlines is giving me 2 triggers for not trusting the content.
  1. dare944 · 1789838098 · focus · HN ↗
    > I want to trust science and dislike anti vaxxers but it’s difficult to argue against them when researchers act like the caricature they are mocked as.
    Wait, you think the article was written by the researchers?
    You know, it's also difficult to trust someone's criticisms when they misassign responsibility. Just like anti-vaxxers do.
    lovich · 1789845647 · focus · HN ↗
    Nope, you’re right to call me out, I was incorrect and reading this way too late.
    My apologies to the researchers
    dare944 · 1789847150 · focus · HN ↗
    It happens. Been guilty of the same myself.
5. Mistletoe · 1789804538 · focus · HN ↗
  It’s the PR arm of a university, they always do this.
  1. bell-cot · 1789807938 · focus · HN ↗
    Pretty much, and they've less shame than a British tabloid in how far they go.
    When submitting, one can try to replace the title with something honest. HN does not favor that, mostly due to submitters having their own biases.
    The best tactic is finding a higher quality article on the subject, to submit instead. That's uncertain, takes time, and may run into paywall issues.
    oivey · 1789808587 · focus · HN ↗
    Possibly making matters worse, this is from Stanford where they had the university president caught engaging in fraud on Alzheimer’s research.
    bell-cot · 1789820091 · focus · HN ↗
    Possibly, but I wouldn't assume any connection. In sociological terms, modern universities are mid-last-millennium noble houses*, locked in an endless competition for power, wealth, prestige, and influence. Adding a few stanzas of hyperbole when bragging about one of their knights vanquishing some infidel of ignorance? That's simply how things are done.
    *Yes, there's never really a king or duke or whatever. But consider the history of the word regent.
6. popalchemist · 1789804709 · focus · HN ↗
  If the two parts arise independently, then the headline may be a bit clunky but it is technically correct.
7. nkmnz · 1789805169 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm pretty sure the third thesis has been taught in my university physiology classes 20 years ago, too.
8. akoboldfrying · 1789807274 · focus · HN ↗
  Oh, I think we could crank that headline even harder while still keeping one toe on the truth. For example:
  "Elon Musk's Brain is Two Separate Organs"
  1. delichon · 1789808739 · focus · HN ↗
    Both of Taylor Swift's Brains are Over 500 Million Years Old
    dotancohen · 1789809893 · focus · HN ↗
    People with maternal Jewish DNA have two brains.
    hilariously · 1789813081 · focus · HN ↗
    You'll be SHOCKED at what we found out about Taylor Swift's TWO BRAINS - that's flying much closer to the sun.
  2. TeMPOraL · 1789810273 · focus · HN ↗
    "and both are asbestos-free"
9. xg15 · 1789808816 · focus · HN ↗
  > "Human forebrain and hindbrain arise from distinct embryonic progenitor lineages"
  I'd have never clicked that headline nor understood why this finding is important.
  If you think the original headline is not "truthful" enough, at least do something like "Researchers found the reason why hindbrain cells cannot be grown in a lab and found a way to overcome it"
  > not that we have "two organs" in the brain.
  Depends what the definition of "organ" actually is. What speaks for different organs here is that the cells both have a different pathway from stem cells and have different evolutionary histories. That is different from other brain regions that may have separate functions but still evolved together.
  1. savolai · 1789809054 · focus · HN ↗
    To me, this suddenly turned the discussion into a fascinating exploration and demonstration of different standards of truthfulness in marketing.
    xg15 · 1789809111 · focus · HN ↗
    I still don't see how the original headline was not truthful.
    UnknownBanana · 1789809473 · focus · HN ↗
    It's as truthful and useful as "75.6% of humans who ingest oxygen end up dead".
    grebc · 1789811187 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s only wrong because it’s 100%.
    wongarsu · 1789811780 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't it more like 93%? On the other 7% data is still inconclusive, they never died
    actionfromafar · 1789813186 · focus · HN ↗
    Depends on if the study is ongoing
    romanows · 1789822281 · focus · HN ↗
    75.6% die is right, it's just that the other 24.4% do too.
    zdragnar · 1789833608 · focus · HN ↗
    Past results are not an indicator of future performance. YMMV.
    wolfy1993 · 1789809478 · focus · HN ↗
    I think it's less about what was said (it is truthful) and more what isn't mentioned in the title which leaves ambiguity.
    I don't necessarily think it's intentional. For those with knowledge in the field I suspect it resonates the appropriate reaction.
    For those outside of the field, I think the perception of what being 2 organs means does a lot of leg work in invoking a response which seems exaggerated, but is probably caused by incorrect assumptions of what the title is trying to convey.
    I hope that makes some sense, I feel that was a lot of word vomit but I'm struggling to find the right words, it's somewhat meta
  2. thaumasiotes · 1789809852 · focus · HN ↗
    > I'd have never clicked that headline nor understood why this finding is important.
    Why do you think it's important?
    xg15 · 1789810746 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't think it's important?
    thaumasiotes · 1789812289 · focus · HN ↗
    You stated that the current headline informs you why the result is important. Why is that? Surely, given that the information was communicated to you, you can share it with me?
    xg15 · 1789824970 · focus · HN ↗
    What I found important was this: "Researchers found the reason why hindbrain cells cannot be grown in a lab and found a way to overcome it"
    But that finding is a direct consecutive of the "cerebellum is a different organ" finding from the headline.
    kulahan · 1789813047 · focus · HN ↗
    In the context of a link aggregator, it’s arguably the only thing that matters
  3. cyanydeez · 1789812802 · focus · HN ↗
    this is a great walk through the curiousity of the hindbrain: <a href="https://radiolab.org/podcast/song-of-the-cerebellum" rel="nofollow">https://radiolab.org/podcast/song-of-the-cerebellum
    The findings arn't exactly "new" but the medical science about it is definitely lagging current research.
  4. baxtr · 1789814830 · focus · HN ↗
    Saying the truth and communicating well are orthogonal. You can do both.
    cgio · 1789819625 · focus · HN ↗
    We should not be wary of loud truths either. Unless we push the envelope we cannot trace back to the essence. Like, as an outsider in this discussion, I am now inclined not only to assess the finding, but also the definition of an organ. The title did good work. Its refutation too. Fencing every statement in unquestionable truth does not make the pursuit of truth stronger.
    DrewADesign · 1789819653 · focus · HN ↗
    But there’s rarely one correct answer. Conveying the same approximate message to multiple types of readers is extremely difficult in a handful of words. People with subject matter knowledge are annoyed by headlines written for laypeople that don’t know the jargon or have a mental model of the important concepts that jargon represents. They always seem to miss important distinctions, make poor analogies, or the like. Headline-length blurbs that successfully convey those things to the knowledgeable are often utterly opaque to laypeople causing them to ignore articles about topics they’d find interesting. The only option is trying to estimate the subject matter expertise of the audience, and despite many people in the tech world assuming their software knowledge gives them technical expertise in many non-software fields, the layperson headline is absolutely the best approach here.
    jamesrcole · 1789829548 · focus · HN ↗
    Not one bit of that justifies actively misleading people. Which is what that headline does.
    DrewADesign · 1789862725 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that’s an exaggeration. Oversimplification? Poor analogy? Sure. Deliberately misleading? I don’t see it.
    threethirtytwo · 1789819985 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not true. There is a complex relationship between truth and good communication. The relationship is non linear and convoluted and it depends often on the subject of what is being communicated.
    There are many many cases where lies are easier to communicate than the truth.
    Take tobacco for instance. For the longest time we did not know it was bad for you. It took decades of epidemiological research and statistical techniques to ascertain that it was bad.
    The truth was buried in numbers and human knowledge about applied mathematics and statistics. Without centuries of human endeavor to create the concept of science unionized with the rigor of statistics the truth would have remained forever invisible.
    The sheer complexity of the truth in this case makes is extremely hard to communicate. We mostly trust that smoking is bad based off of the reputation of the researchers who established that fact. But the truth was never really directly communicated to most of us as it involves diving deep into the data.
    baxtr · 1789820972 · focus · HN ↗
    You understand what I did there?
    threethirtytwo · 1789821477 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah you told a lie. Demonstrating how easy it is to make it look true.
    MarkusQ · 1789825607 · focus · HN ↗
    The truth about tobacco was known for years but ignored because 1) industry lobbying and 2) the Nazis were the ones who figured it out, and pushed anti-smoking hard, so smoking became something "our side" did, 3) tobacco was still a huge US export.
    It was easy to communicate, but we were motivated to not listen.
    threethirtytwo · 1789831312 · focus · HN ↗
    No the deaths were buried deep in the statistical data. It’s not apparent and we did not know either way.
    Yes there were people who said it’s bad but their word was as good as bullshit because until we had the statistics there is literally no way to truly know.
    MarkusQ · 1789833685 · focus · HN ↗
    No, the Germans had good statistical data linking smoking (as well as asbestos and other carcinogens) to cancer by the 1930s; this was known and ignored (or actively derided) by the allies. It's one of the classic and well known examples of ad hominem.
    threethirtytwo · 1789852132 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    jamesrcole · 1789829666 · focus · HN ↗
    > There is a complex relationship between truth and *good* communication. [...] There are many many cases where lies are *easier to communicate* than the truth.
    You're literally conflating good communication with easy communication.
    threethirtytwo · 1789831169 · focus · HN ↗
    Easy communication correlates highly with good communication. It is easier to do good communication on easier topics.
    cwmoore · 1789826848 · focus · HN ↗
    “…but LLMs can’t” is the unspoken sticking point.
  5. fluidcruft · 1789834185 · focus · HN ↗
    I actually saw the previous version yesterday and read it. Then I saw this one today and thought it was a different finding. Somewhat annoying.
  6. rglullis · 1789839524 · focus · HN ↗
    > I'd have never clicked that headline nor understood why this finding is important
    Does this finding change your life in any meaningful way?
    efuquen · 1789840330 · focus · HN ↗
    > Armed with this knowledge, the researchers for the first time successfully coaxed human pluripotent stem cells (a kind of cell that can create any cell in the human body) to become functional hindbrain motor neurons in the laboratory.
    ...
    > The research also has implications for investigating treatments for SMA, ALS and other conditions affecting the brain stem. Until now, studying these diseases has been nearly impossible because scientists cannot obtain brain stem tissue from living patients. The ability to grow these neurons in a dish opens new possibilities for understanding what goes wrong.
    But no, nothing to see here, not worth our time for this overblown article apparently ...
    rglullis · 1789915967 · focus · HN ↗
    > The research also has implications for investigating treatments for SMA, ALS and other conditions affecting the brain stem.
    Are you working on research for any of these? If no, then this article is just "empty calories" in your information diet. If yes, I'd assume (hope, even) that you wouldn't be hearing from this through some institutional PR piece.
    xg15 · 1789941445 · focus · HN ↗
    Because no layman should ever keep up yo date on research?
    By that logic, most of HN is "empty calories". Then why are you here?
    rglullis · 1789993263 · focus · HN ↗
    > most of HN is "empty calories".
    Agree.
    > why are you here?
    For the parts that are not empty calories.
    [deleted] · 1789840762 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
10. jimnotgym · 1789808963 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't have a problem with the 'two organs making one' framing. The fact that they are 'symbiotic' now doesn't change that. In fact it helps me understand two key facts. One can't grow out of the other, and they work differently. Great
  1. ChrisMarshallNY · 1789812798 · focus · HN ↗
    The Portuguese Man o’ War[0] is a symbiotic organism. If you want to get technical, I guess we are, as well. We’re really kind of fascinating meatbags.
    [0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war
    smt88 · 1789829358 · focus · HN ↗
    We are absolutely symbiotic from our cells upward. A large percentage of your body mass is bacteria, including the symbiotic bacteria you feed in your gut with the food you think you’re eating only for yourself.
    nephihaha · 1789893538 · focus · HN ↗
    Recent research has suggested that viruses supply us with a second immune system. These viruses keep down the numbers of bacteria and other microbes in our gut etc
    We are so used to reading negative things about viruses that it makes a change to find out how they can benefit us too.
11. AltruisticGapHN · 1789809218 · focus · HN ↗
  Main issue I have with the title is it immediately reminded me about McGilchrist's "The Divided Brain" and I thought they meant the two halves - but that is not the case.
  So the question still remains...
  <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain
12. jijijijij · 1789814171 · focus · HN ↗
  This is meaningless semantic drama over a meaningful discovery. From a biological and medical perspective, the collective term "organ" is pretty useless, if there is a distinct progenitor lineage. For the sake of a simplified explanation for the public, describing this discovery as finding "two organs" is absolutely fair.
  A similar example: The melanocytes in the skin originate from the neural crest, not the epidermis. As a significant consequence, melanocytes share cell attributes with neurons. One of these attributes is the ability to infiltrate other tissues. Because of that, malignant transformation of melanocytes has vastly different consequences, compared to epithelial cells. If you asked your doctor why squamous cell cancer and melanoma have such different prognoses, describing your skin as effectively "two organs" would be illustrative and easy to understand, without getting into developmental biology.
13. ocimbote · 1789817129 · focus · HN ↗
  I think you're right. And I would even assume that, should the article be from Fox News (just an example), every other commenter that excuses the title would have yelled at journalism slop, clickbait and whatnot.
  But that's stanford.edu, so we must tread lightly.
14. tarun_anand · 1789818776 · focus · HN ↗
  Agree on the ancient knowledge and some other interesting aspects I discovered when working with a Doctor who modeled 3D Brain apertures with me.
  Comments somewhere down below has details.
15. acd10j · 1789821821 · focus · HN ↗
  No one will want to open your headline.
16. blacklion · 1789823143 · focus · HN ↗
  But third item means that there are two organs almost by definition, so original headline maybe slightly sensationalist, but not technically false.
17. dboreham · 1789823917 · focus · HN ↗
  I've found it useful to think in terms of how such structures might have evolved. The beginning state is always something very simple: the first nerve. It must go from A to B. Perhaps from a food sensing area to a muscle. Sense food, stop moving, something like that. Organisms could evolve multiple copies of that structure: N nerves going from A(n) to B(n). At some point the next invention arises: some logic gate type thing that branches and/or combines nerves. So now sensing food can make movement stop and also digestion begin. Or food response can be attenuated during the day time. And so on. There's no reason why you'd have exactly one of these "nerve processor" nodes. There's also no reason why several different kinds of them and different instances might evolve. They're useful. Then at some point the next discovery is made: by combining several nerve processor nodes in close proximity, with their own inter-node connections, you can perform more complex processing. You've now got a proto-brain. But again there's nothing to say you have exactly one of these things, or that they're exact replicas of each other.
18. huurtehoog · 1789824560 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm sorry, it just sounds like you're mad at medical researcher for trying to make their research more accessible?
  What do you mean by oversell? And why do you think the general public would be more apt to understand "distinct embryonic progenitor lineages" than "two organs"?
  What exactly is the problem here? You think medical researcher are using medial nomenclature wrong?
  Honestly write a paper about it then.
  1. xtiansimon · 1789824855 · focus · HN ↗
    > “…make their research more accessible.”
    I wanted a drawing, but was disappointed.
19. dreamcompiler · 1789825439 · focus · HN ↗
  Agreed. Anybody who looks at a picture of the brain can see the cerebellum (part of the hindbrain) is obviously a different organ. I only clicked the link to find out if there was any new science buried under the hype of the title.
20. _alternator_ · 1789826113 · focus · HN ↗
  They also use this result to great hindbrain neurons in the lab for the first time, so it's a strikingly useful discovery.
  I think it's also fair to say they are different organs based on the developmental physiology. Many other organs come from distinct embryonic cell lines.
21. adrian_b · 1789826293 · focus · HN ↗
  Nonetheless, there is some truth in the headline.
  When an organ is known to be generated from 2 distinct embryonic preforms, which become merged and integrated at a later stage of development, there is a likelihood that in some distant ancestor the integration into a single organ was much less advanced than now and possibly the two parts remained as relatively separated organs even during adulthood.
  There are many groups of animals that include both some species that have retained a more primitive condition, where some nervous ganglia have remained separated, while other species have a derived condition, where those nervous ganglia have fused into a single ganglion.
  In this case it is not known for sure what happened, because the early evolution of the nervous system, from a sensory structure embedded in the skin to a complex internal system that mediates the communication between sensors and motor or secretory organs, is still poorly understood.
  In any case, this research confirms that the differences between forebrain+midbrain (which includes the cerebrum) and hindbrain (which includes the cerebellum) are very important, because they become established very early during the development of the embryo, at a time when the progenitors of many organs are still interchangeable.
22. Pavilion2095 · 1789827446 · focus · HN ↗
  Instead of starting a meaningless argument about the title, try reading the article. It explains the significance of this discovery.
23. kingkawn · 1789827699 · focus · HN ↗
  we already knew the last part, they’ve just defined it a little better
24. smolder · 1789830740 · focus · HN ↗
  Yeah, this is a frequent failure of science communication. Misleading clickbait overselling a paper that made real progress in some capacity. I'd be more interested in hearing the truth of the matter and about the researchers passion for their study area. Spinning everything into some high stakes breakthrough that fundamentally changes our understanding of the world just makes me feel like my time was maliciously wasted and that I shouldn't click on news about science.
  1. itsalwaysgood · 1789847010 · focus · HN ↗
    That's true, and hype to secure future funding is probably related somehow.
    The article did change an understanding about worlds though, it's just the inner one.
    I thought the article title was ok, and material was accessible. I didn't have to go look up 15 new words. I don't mind learning new words, just not all the time. I have seen the hype based articles you mentioned in the past.
25. JJMcJ · 1789831100 · focus · HN ↗
  Often the headline is not created by the author of the article.
  Also newspaper headlines used to give a quick summary of the story, online articles as you say, clickbait.
  1. sci4all · 1789837523 · focus · HN ↗
    can confirm from experience that the headline and press release were likely 100% from Stanford’s comms department and the authors are likely panicking about the hyperbolic spin
26. philipov · 1789831536 · focus · HN ↗
  It's much simpler to change "is" to "was"
27. fluidcruft · 1789832123 · focus · HN ↗
  When I studied neuroanatomy in the early 2000s it was already taught that the evolutionary history of the forebrain (from comparative anatomy) seems to have invaded the hindbrain and seems to control it like a puppet. It's nice to see this sort of confirmation but it doesn't strike me as an earth-shaking discovery except that it might give some insights for differential drug targeting.
  1. digitaltrees · 1789838242 · focus · HN ↗
    This is one of the problems with modern academics, every paper has to be framed as some revolutionary idea or insight. We should celebrate “boring” research that serves nothing other than curiosity.
    [deleted] · 1789840618 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    fasterik · 1789841053 · focus · HN ↗
    Academics themselves rarely frame their research in sensational terms. This happens in press releases and media coverage, which they have little control over. You can see this by comparing the title of the press release to the quotes by the actual researchers:
    "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."
    "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."
    I don't hear much overselling or hype in this, I hear an accurate description of the research and a bit of nerding out over it.
    thenoblesunfish · 1789843216 · focus · HN ↗
    It's the same problem as when a journalist or nonfiction author writes a thoughtful, nuanced piece of work, and some editor slaps a catchy title and subtitle on.
    nntwozz · 1789843679 · focus · HN ↗
    ~ tHe gOd pArTiClE ~
28. icefrog98 · 1789836444 · focus · HN ↗
  A physical connection and collaborative function aren't enough to define a single organ anymore. It must also share a developmental and evolutionary origin.
29. Spooky23 · 1789841830 · focus · HN ↗
  The audience for a news headline is a layperson who may have no knowledge of or context to infer past factoids about brain regions or evolutionary biology.
  There’s a balance between being informative to the audience and satisfying for pedants.
30. johnnyanmac · 1789847267 · focus · HN ↗
  >The headline should have been: "Human forebrain and hindbrain arise from distinct embryonic progenitor lineages" - not that we have "two organs" in the brain.
  Well we see why you're not a journalist.

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