"The brain becomes both much larger and still more complex as we move to vertebrates such as fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The spinal cord, now protected within the vertebrae of the backbone, has become primarily a servant of the brain, a busy two-way highway of communication with fibers segregated into descending motor pathways and ascending sensory ones. The brain itself is now composed of a series of swellings of the anterior end of the spinal cord (the brain stem), the three major ones making up the three major parts of the vertebrate brain: the hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain. From the hindbrain sprouts a distinctive structure, the "cerebellum" (Latin for "little brain").
Among mammals, the brain keeps its three major components, but with two new structures. The neocerebellum ("new cerebellum") is added to the cerebellum, looking much like a fungal growth at the base of the brain, and the neocortex ("new cortex") grows out of the front of the forebrain. In most mammals, these new additions are not particularly large relative to the brain stem. In primates they are much larger, and in the human they are so large that the original brain stem is almost completely hidden by this large convoluted mass of grey neural matter.
American evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould provided a term for this phenomenon--exaptation. He made a major contribution to our understanding of evolution by insisting that we distinguish adaptation, the evolutionary process through which adaptedly complex structures and behaviors are progressively fine-tuned by natural selection with no marked change in the structure's or behavior's function, from exaptation, through which structures and behaviors originally selected for one function become involved in another, possibly quite unrelated, function. Exaptation makes it difficult if not impossible to understand why our brain evolved as it did. Although the brain allows us to speak, sing, dance, laugh, design computers, and solve differential equations, these and other abilities may well be accidental side effects of its evolution."
Professor Gary Cziko
Among mammals, the brain keeps its three major components, but with two new structures. The neocerebellum ("new cerebellum") is added to the cerebellum, looking much like a fungal growth at the base of the brain, and the neocortex ("new cortex") grows out of the front of the forebrain. In most mammals, these new additions are not particularly large relative to the brain stem. In primates they are much larger, and in the human they are so large that the original brain stem is almost completely hidden by this large convoluted mass of grey neural matter.
American evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould provided a term for this phenomenon--exaptation. He made a major contribution to our understanding of evolution by insisting that we distinguish adaptation, the evolutionary process through which adaptedly complex structures and behaviors are progressively fine-tuned by natural selection with no marked change in the structure's or behavior's function, from exaptation, through which structures and behaviors originally selected for one function become involved in another, possibly quite unrelated, function. Exaptation makes it difficult if not impossible to understand why our brain evolved as it did. Although the brain allows us to speak, sing, dance, laugh, design computers, and solve differential equations, these and other abilities may well be accidental side effects of its evolution."
Professor Gary Cziko
Add Comment
RSS Feed
