Sometimes evolution happens so fast that if you blink, you miss it…
The neocortex of our brain is the seat of our intellect. New data suggests that mammals created it with new types of cells that they developed only after their evolutionary split from reptiles.
By looking at patterns of gene expression in individual brain cells, researchers at Columbia University showed that despite the anatomical similarities, the neocortex in mammals and the DVR in reptiles are unrelated. Instead, mammals seem to have evolved the neocortex as an entirely new brain region, one built without a trace of what came before it. The neocortex is composed of new types of neurons that seem to have no precedent in ancestral animals. – Allison Whitten, February 14, 2023
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