For those interested in brain evolution and practical neuroscience/human behavior:
Carl Sagan's books "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden" from the 70's-80's are good initial reads on brain composition and evolution. The Sapolsky lectures and books are also great resources.
It's a crude analogy, but I would say the hindbrain is more like the system management co-processor or controller that tends to low-level hardware features.
The forebrain is the main processor. It does all the stuff you think of from OS to application, and has some ability to monitor and even interfere in the system management co-processor.
Whether either of these things have interesting internal structure and functional decomposition is left unaddressed. This observation about the progenitor cells is a bit like seeing the BOM that says they come from different suppliers.
I think it's also a bit of guesswork to try to reason out the evolutionary history. I.e. was either unit "in the market" longer and useful on its own, versus essentially complementary parts that just happen to have a divided supply chain! Intuition about evolutionary processes and life makes it really easy to assume the hindbrain is an older, legacy system that existed independently or with other long-lost companion units.
Original paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 (paywall)
New Scientist Article:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolv...
https://archive.is/1CFX9
Seems to be based on the Stanford article: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/09/two-separate-...
For those interested in brain evolution and practical neuroscience/human behavior:
Carl Sagan's books "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden" from the 70's-80's are good initial reads on brain composition and evolution. The Sapolsky lectures and books are also great resources.
So hindbrain is the OS kernel and forebrain the application server ?
I think more like file explorer!
Maybe more like the baseband modem in a phone?
It's a crude analogy, but I would say the hindbrain is more like the system management co-processor or controller that tends to low-level hardware features.
The forebrain is the main processor. It does all the stuff you think of from OS to application, and has some ability to monitor and even interfere in the system management co-processor.
Whether either of these things have interesting internal structure and functional decomposition is left unaddressed. This observation about the progenitor cells is a bit like seeing the BOM that says they come from different suppliers.
I think it's also a bit of guesswork to try to reason out the evolutionary history. I.e. was either unit "in the market" longer and useful on its own, versus essentially complementary parts that just happen to have a divided supply chain! Intuition about evolutionary processes and life makes it really easy to assume the hindbrain is an older, legacy system that existed independently or with other long-lost companion units.
That sounds about right.