MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London
Science for Health
Natural selection in the brain?
10 December 2008
Psychologists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, neurobiologists and anthropologists have held the view that something like evolution by natural selection plays a role in complex thinking and problem solving in the brain. However, it is not immediately obvious that anything self-replicates in the brain overnight, to allow consolidation of memories.
Chrisantha Fernando, in Richard Goldstein's group in NIMR's Division of Mathematical Biology, and colleagues in Budapest and Munich, have proposed that units of selection composed of neuronal networks with a particular connectivity pattern could replicate in the brain. The neuronal components that could allow replication are already well described. Replication of a neuronal pattern would be very fast, with one generation taking a minute or less. Such processes may be important for memory formation, i.e. the conversion of a dynamical pattern into a connectivity structure capable of reproducing that pattern at a later date.
Through genetic evolution, mammals and perhaps birds may have developed mechanisms to launch a neuronal evolutionary system, just as the vertebrates have invented adaptive immunity. This paper marks the beginning of a new paradigm of applying natural selection to the process of thinking.
Chrisantha Fernando
Original article
The research findings are published in full in:
Chrisantha Fernando1, K. K. Karishma, Eörs Szathmáry
Copying and Evolution of Neuronal Topology
PLoS ONE, 3(11): e3775. Publisher full-text
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