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Human brain is two separate organs, Stanford Medicine-led research finds (med.stanford.edu)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/science@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Wow, that was a really fascinating article. I suppose this will also factor in to understanding the differing ability for higher thought between us and other animals.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    It's not unique to humans at all. They originally found the two types of brain cells by looking at mouse embryos. Then,

    "Finally, the researchers looked back over 550 million years of evolutionary time. They found the same two-origin brain pattern in chickens; zebrafish; and, remarkably, in acorn worms, tiny creatures living on the ocean floor that share a distant common ancestor with humans. Jellyfish, which diverged from humans about 600 to 700 million years ago, have two nervous systems at different ends of their body.

    “Our research suggests that evolution took two existing neural systems and pushed them together spatially,” Loh said. “Having the brain as one organ would probably be more efficient, but we rely on this primordial way to make the brain as two separate pieces.”

    We've long known the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain control different things, we just didn't know the hindbrain neuron cells evolved so fundamentally differently. Being able to grow the right kind in a lab will enable research that wasn't possible before.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Maybe it's one for automatic processes and another for manual?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    In a way, yes. Breathing is a very interesting case here. Breathing is controlled by both sides, actually. At night, you don't want to have to think about breathing in, breathing out. But for diving and swimming and speaking, you need precise and active control.

    So there is a complex mechanism to hand over the control from one side to the other. Sudden infant death syndrome is probably linked to the development of this handover process.

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