From: Skeptoid Companion Email <noreply@skeptoid.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2026 at 12:19
Subject: Skeptoid: Poisoned Halloween Candy
To: <zvagoman@gmail.com>
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The weekly companion email provided with each new episode of the Skeptoid podcast |
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Skeptoid #1064: POISONED HALLOWEEN CANDY On Halloween 2022, there was a real fear that candy-colored fentanyl would end up in children’s trick-or-treat bags. by Ashley Hamer Pritchard  |
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WONDER OF THE WEEK Your brain isn't one organ, it's two  Simplified diagram of brain structure Did you think that your brain was a single, unified organ? You're in good company, as that's what scientists have thought for centuries. A fascinating new study led by Stanford Medicine has just destroyed that idea. Thinking that our brains grow from a single progenitor cell in early development has been the norm, and implied that all of the brain's parts share a common developmental origin. But evolution is tricksy. It turns out that what we call the brain is really two ancient nervous systems sharing some clever packaging. There's the more primitive part, known as the hindbrain, which runs life support systems such as breathing, heart beats, hunger, etc. The forebrain, where our distinctly human capabilities for poetry, math, music, cooking, and metacognition happen, had a separate evolutionary path. This discovery could explain why scientists have struggled for so long to grow certain types of brain cells in the lab, and opens new avenues for studying the diseases that devastate the brain stem, including SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease). Senior author Dr. Kyle Loh, associate professor of developmental biology, said, "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. 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 paper describes how the team made the discovery while studying the first moments of embryonic development in mice, a stage called gastrulation. They discovered that the hindbrain follows a parallel developmental path than the midbrain and forebrain, rather than branching off from them. They identified two distinct brain progenitor cells. One becomes the forebrain and midbrain, while the other forms the hindbrain. The two cell populations never overlap, but are distinct right from the start. Co-first author Rayyan Jokhai explained, "Previous attempts to make hindbrain neurons likely tried to coax forebrain and midbrain progenitors into hindbrain cells, which our study shows is not possible." He added, "In stem cell biology, people are always fixated with creating the end cell type, like the neuron. But it's important to begin at the earliest stages of embryonic development. Our careful attention to that early time point allowed us to find this fundamental split in brain development." Diseases such as SMA and ALS have been nearly impossible to study because scientists can't sample brain stem tissue from living patients. Opening the door to growing hindbrain cells in a petri dish could revolutionize that research. Contributed by Craig Good. |
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