Our brain evolved from two primitive nervous systems that merged: Study(newscientist.com) |
Our brain evolved from two primitive nervous systems that merged: Study(newscientist.com) |
This shift from the "bicameral mentality" of the external voice to the modern mentality of the inner voice was hypothesized by Jaynes to be rooted in some biological changes in the brain. At the time there was split brain research that showed these two parts of the brain function independently almost as two different minds in the same skull. See this 2007 survey: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6323702_The_bicamer...
That means whatever the change was would have to had occur simultaneously in separate populations all over the world within almost no time at all.
Also, that study is extremely dubious/barring on fan-fiction.
Homer (if he was even a person) recited oral epic poetry (that we've lost most of) and we've written down an extremely lossy version of it.
Why should we take any of the mythical character's interactions with mythical gods as any insight for the brains of real humans???
It'd be like year 4000 historians citing World of Warcraft claiming the Lich King is a very obvious example that humans lack an internal monologue because he was not able to distinguish his own motives/actions between Ner'zhul/Arthas (both spiritual entities inhabiting the "Lich King" body).
...in a specific region, in a specific time period, immediately before the economic and then societal crash of the eastern Mediterranean that changed culture in the region forever.
The hypothesis breaks down pretty hard when you realize he just kind of handwaves away people in the rest of the world not having any kind of abrupt cut-over in the styles of recorded literature that forms the backbone of his arguments.
this is thier claim :
“We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain,” said Kyle Loh, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology. “Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions.”
in translation, the two regions of the brain develop from different expressive states of the progenitor populations. the problem was difficulty culturing cerebellar neurons, due to a unrecognized disparity in genetic expressivity. the neurons were being manipulated as if they were running the same config.sys, and that was not the case. this work elucidates that fact and recognizes it as essential, to invitro culture of "hindbrain" neurons.
The findings were published in Nature Neuroscience Sept. 18. Loh is the senior author. Graduate students Carolyn Dundes and Rayyan Jokhai are co-first authors of the research.
Carl Sagan's books "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden" from the 70's-80's are good initial reads on brain composition and evolution. The Sapolsky lectures and books are also great resources.
Damage to the hind brain results in behavioural changes that are blatantly different compared to when the "newer" parts of the brain is damaged. The cerebellum literally even has a different color.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02433-7 (paywall)
New Scientist Article:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2589739-our-brain-evolv...
The forebrain is the main processor. It does all the stuff you think of from OS to application, and has some ability to monitor and even interfere in the system management co-processor.
Whether either of these things have interesting internal structure and functional decomposition is left unaddressed. This observation about the progenitor cells is a bit like seeing the BOM that says they come from different suppliers.
I think it's also a bit of guesswork to try to reason out the evolutionary history. I.e. was either unit "in the market" longer and useful on its own, versus essentially complementary parts that just happen to have a divided supply chain! Intuition about evolutionary processes and life makes it really easy to assume the hindbrain is an older, legacy system that existed independently or with other long-lost companion units.
(Perhaps the updated title is less objectionable?)
Argument from authority is a bad thing specifically when it's used to make incorrect claims on the basis of authority. But authority as a concept still has plenty of merit.
If you've never seen it I HIGHLY recommend it if only to show how weird our brains actually are.
A good chaser to the above is Peter Watts talk on hive minds [1]. He was a neurology research and the author of the famous sci-fi novel Blindgsight [2]
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8&vl=en
Otherwise I'm free to claim I'm an authority on your moms butthole.
An authority claim by virtue of itself is not worth investigating. Science doesn't work that way. Math doesn't work that way.
Exactly. Thank you.
> I'd place a lot more stock on it than on a random headline based on their authority alone. So I, for one, care.
I would leave you to contemplate the meaning of what you yourself wrote.