Eugene Bell Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
Department of Biology, Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate Program, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Curr Biol. 2023 Oct 23;33(20):R1087-R1091. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.092.
Giant brains have independently evolved twice on this planet, in vertebrates and in cephalopods (Figure 1A). Thus, the brains and nervous systems of cephalopods provide an important counterpoint to vertebrates in the search for generalities of brain organization and function. Their mere existence disproves various hypotheses proposed to explain the evolution of the mind and the human brain, such as cognition and large brains evolved only in long-lived animals with complex social systems and parental care, none of which is true of cephalopods. Therefore, it is worthwhile to review what is known about the evolution of cephalopod nervous systems to consider how it informs our understanding of general principles of brain evolution.
在这个星球上,巨型大脑已经在脊椎动物和头足类动物中独立进化了两次(图 1A)。因此,头足类动物的大脑和神经系统为寻找大脑组织和功能的普遍性提供了一个重要的对比点,与脊椎动物相对比。它们的存在本身就否定了各种用来解释心智和人类大脑进化的假说,例如认知和大型大脑仅在具有复杂社会系统和亲代照顾的长寿动物中进化,而这些都不适用于头足类动物。因此,值得回顾一下已知的头足类动物神经系统的进化情况,以考虑它如何为我们理解大脑进化的一般原理提供信息。