Why are killer whales ramming yachts?

Our first story, Ciara.

has to do with our brains.

Yeah, so this is a piece of work that comes from researchers in the California Institute of Technology.

So the primary researcher is Ryan Jokine, who was published just last week in Nature Neuroscience.

So this is about the evolution of the different parts of our brain and the idea that actually they might come from two different sources.

So the adult brain consists of, roughly speaking, three chunks, right? There's the forebrain, the midbrain and the hindbrain.

And the forebrain and the midbrain are the parts that are sort of the thinking parts of our brain.

So, you know, that's where we have our kind of our memory and our language and our reasoning and all that kind of thing.

We also have the hindbrain, which is sometimes also called the brainstem.

And that really controls...

The lizard brain.

Well, we could call it that.

I don't think neuroscientists would call it that.

So that sort of controls the kind of autonomic functions.

So like breathing and heartbeat regulation and like hunger and satiety and things like that.

And it was kind of always, you know, originally assumed that all of these different pieces of the brain sort of came about through the same evolutionary track.

And that, you know, we know that the hindbrain is older than the midbrain and the forebrain, but that they kind of just all evolved along the same track.

And what these researchers are showing is that actually there seem to be two different sort of populations of cells back in evolutionary history that joined together to form, eventually these two different brains that kind of have joined together to form the human brain.

So what we need to understand here is, so you'll be familiar with the concept of stem cells, right? So stem cells are cells in the very, very earliest stages of development in an embryo and they can become anything.

So they're called, they're pluripotent.

I like to call

them like blank scrabble cells.

Yeah, exactly.

They're like blank scrabble tiles and they can become anything at all.

So those then later on in development develop into what are called progenitor cells.

Our first story, Ciara.

has to do with our brains.

Yeah, so this is a piece of work that comes from researchers in the California Institute of Technology.

So the primary researcher is Ryan Jokine, who was published just last week in Nature Neuroscience.

So this is about the evolution of the different parts of our brain and the idea that actually they might come from two different sources.

So the adult brain consists of, roughly speaking, three chunks, right? There's the forebrain, the midbrain and the hindbrain.

And the forebrain and the midbrain are the parts that are sort of the thinking parts of our brain.

So, you know, that's where we have our kind of our memory and our language and our reasoning and all that kind of thing.

We also have the hindbrain, which is sometimes also called the brainstem.

And that really controls...

The lizard brain.

Well, we could call it that.

I don't think neuroscientists would call it that.

So that sort of controls the kind of autonomic functions.

So like breathing and heartbeat regulation and like hunger and satiety and things like that.

And it was kind of always, you know, originally assumed that all of these different pieces of the brain sort of came about through the same evolutionary track.

And that, you know, we know that the hindbrain is older than the midbrain and the forebrain, but that they kind of just all evolved along the same track.

And what these researchers are showing is that actually there seem to be two different sort of populations of cells back in evolutionary history that joined together to form, eventually these two different brains that kind of have joined together to form the human brain.

So what we need to understand here is, so you'll be familiar with the concept of stem cells, right? So stem cells are cells in the very, very earliest stages of development in an embryo and they can become anything.

So they're called, they're pluripotent.

I like to call

them like blank scrabble cells.

Yeah, exactly.

They're like blank scrabble tiles and they can become anything at all.

So those then later on in development develop into what are called progenitor cells.