Congratulations to first author @meng-yun.bsky.social and thanks to Guy Vingerhoets in Ghent, Belgium for the nice collaboration, also co-authors Nicole Ng, Else Eising, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social 5/5

The findings suggest a strong developmental link between left-right axis formation for visceral organs and brain anatomical torque, maybe mediated by the vascular system, but a largely or wholly separate mechanism that patterns functional brain asymmetries 4/5

whereas functional brain asymmetries such as left-hemisphere language dominance seem to be unaltered compared to the general population, again regardless of the presence or absence of identifiable genetic causes for their reversed visceral organ placement ...3/5

We found that asymmetrical 'torque' of brain structure tends to reverse in people with situs inversus totalis regardless of whether they have identifiable genetic causes ... 2/5

Will try to be there!!

Thanks Silivia! Yes we added a second batch of data since the Laterality conference and roughly doubled the sample size

Thanks Cedric! Yes it was among genes identified in GWAS studies of human brain asymmetry that we found most evidence for asymmetrical expression in the mouse brain - more than among genes from the larger Xenium mouse brain standard panel. Encouraging!

Many congratulations to first authors Dannielle Houwing and @meng-yun.bsky.social and thanks to @maxplanck.de @mpi-nl.bsky.social @dondersinst.bsky.social @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @grandjeanlab.bsky.social and others not on bluesky !! 7/7

It looks like mice can be useful for understanding some aspects of human brain asymmetry, although differences of gene expression between hemispheres were small. Future studies of e.g. mouse genetic knockouts would need adequate sample sizes to overcome this 6/7

In mouse auditory cortex, various microtubule-associated genes showed evidence for subtle left-right differences. Again the human versions have been linked to brain asymmetry or handedness in previous large-scale studies www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 5/7

... corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 was differently expressed in the left and right mouse hippocampus, and also to an extent in auditory cortex. We previously found that the human version of this gene is associated with structural brain asymmetry www.nature.com/articles/s41... 4/7

... so we focused on these two brain structures in slices from 31 adult mouse brains using Xenium, a method to detect single mRNA molecules and place them in cellular context. We found that ... 3/7

In most humans, language and hand motor control are lateralized to the left hemisphere. Altered brain asymmetry can be found in some psychiatric conditions. Mice also have asymmetries of brain function, in the hippocampus and auditory cortex... 2/7