Can someone explain:
As a newborn mammal opens its eyes for the first time, it can already make visual sense of the world around it. But how does this happen before they have experienced sight?
A new Yale study suggests that, in a sense, mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are even born.
Writing in the July 23 issue of Science, a team led by Michael Crair, the William Ziegler III Professor of Neuroscience and professor of ophthalmology and visual science, describes waves of activity that emanate from the neonatal retina in mice before their eyes ever open.
This activity disappears soon after birth and is replaced by a more mature network of neural transmissions of visual stimuli to the brain, where information is further encoded and stored.
“At eye opening, mammals are capable of pretty sophisticated behavior,” said Crair, senior author of the study, who is also vice provost for research at Yale.” But how do the circuits form that allow us to perceive motion and navigate the world? It turns out we are born capable of many of these behaviors, at least in rudimentary form.”
In the study, Crair’s team, led by Yale graduate students Xinxin Ge and Kathy Zhang, explored the origins of these waves of activity. Imaging the brains of mice soon after birth but before their eyes opened, the Yale team found that these retinal waves flow in a pattern that mimics the activity that would occur if the animal were moving forward through the environment. Yale University, “Eyes wide shut: How newborn mammals dream the world they’re entering” at ScienceDaily
The paper is closed access.
Surely this is not possible without design in nature. Too much information.
Note: Anyone familiar with kittens will have noticed this. The kittens begin to behave like cats as soon as they have acquired neurological competence with their own limbs.
But that takes several weeks.
See also:
In what ways are cats intelligent? Cats have nearly twice as many neurons as dogs and a bigger and more complex cerebral cortex.
And In what ways are dogs intelligent? There is no human counterpart to some types of dog intelligence.