Reports claiming humans have two brains misrepresented new research and stemmed from an inaccurate university press release. The study does not identify a second brain; it examines how the vertebrate nervous system develops distinct regions, offering insight into fundamental processes in developmental biology.

Vertebrate nervous systems form from a neural tube that develops along the embryo’s head-to-tail axis and later becomes the forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain and spinal cord. Researchers are investigating whether these regions inherit positional information from surrounding embryonic tissue or receive chemical signals after neural cells form; the broad process is shared across vertebrates, although its timing and details vary between species.