Stanford team reports method to grow functional human hindbrain motor neurons

Stanford Medicine-led researchers reported that forebrain-midbrain and hindbrain development arise from separate progenitor-cell populations, challenging a single-origin model of brain development. The team said it used that finding to produce functional human hindbrain motor neurons from pluripotent stem cells in the laboratory. The neurons showed action potentials and proteins associated with hindbrain segments controlling facial and swallowing muscles. The findings, based in part on developing mouse embryos, were published Sept. 18 in Nature Neuroscience.