What's the point of a brain?

[Falcon]

GuyGuy seems to get through life well enough without one.

But seriously,

The sea squirt, a type of marine filter feeder, swims around looking for somewhere to settle down for the rest of its life. Once parked on a rock in a suitable spot, it never moves again. So the first thing it does is eat its own brain. While this may seem a little rash to some, for Professor Daniel Wolpert it makes perfect evolutionary sense.
“To me it’s obvious that there’s no point in the brain processing or storing anything if it can’t have benefits for physical movement, because that’s the only way we improve our survival,” says Wolpert. “I believe that to understand movement is to understand the whole brain. Memory, cognition, sensory processing – they are there for a reason, and that reason is action.”

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/the-man-with-the-golden-brain/

Quite interesting concepts

[edyle]

GuyGuy seems to get through life well enough without one.

But seriously,



http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/the-man-with-the-golden-brain/

Quite interesting concepts

Maybe that's one of the very earliest functions of the brain.
Or more correctly - a brain: to perform movement functions. The new offspring have this appendage which helps them process with respect to movement to a new location; then its not any use.

Now I suspect there can be confusion here surrounding what constitutes the brain; we of course would be tempted to assume that other animal brains resemble the human brain.

[letric]

The brain is the only weapon man has for survival, can he survive without it?

[edyle]

You can't compare 'a brain' of a simple octopus creature with 'a brain' of a human.
The human brain would be the highest stage of sophistication of brains on the evolutionary scale.

It is not surprising that early and simple creatures would have so simple a brain that it functions only for a short time for a specific purpose; there are even simpler lifeforms that do not have anything that can be called a brain.

[Sirius]

^^ Correct. The more complex the organism, the more it requires some sort of system for learning, reasoning and coordination. For there not be no need for brains then all organisms would have to remain as pretty simple creatures.

[Amelia]

What kind of question is this? Falcs, like you went ahead and had a nibble on yours.

[Falcon]

I didn't ask the question. I brought the line from the lead article.

I think when someone asks 'what is the point of', that they don't necessarily mean it has no point and they're going to tell you why.
It's juts an attempt to explore the evolutionary significance of animals developing more and more complex brains. The fact that three professionals have misinterpreted that statement above has made me re-examine the lead post. I still can't see that slant.

The animals with bigger brains tend to develop them, and generally be smarter. However squid, ants and corvids tend to be quite clever.

[edyle]

I didn't ask the question. I brought the line from the lead article.

I think when someone asks 'what is the point of', that they don't necessarily mean it has no point and they're going to tell you why.
It's juts an attempt to explore the evolutionary significance of animals developing more and more complex brains. The fact that three professionals have misinterpreted that statement above has made me re-examine the lead post. I still can't see that slant.

The animals with bigger brains tend to develop them, and generally be smarter. However squid, ants and corvids tend to be quite clever.

Since you used the phrase 'bigger brains' I wanted to raise the issue of the STRUCTURE of the brain.
Early animals would have had simple brains; notably the squid's brain perhaps resembles what some very early brains may have been like.

Now the human brain has various structures and there is a pattern with the inner central core structures and and the outer ones;
a pattern suggestive that earlier species in the evolutionary sequence would have have the central structures whereas the later species had these additional structures; notably in the human brain there is the FRONTAL LOBE, which crudely speaking gives the higher order animals the ability to THINK.

[Sirius]

The linked article talks about the significance of the brain for movement. In that sense the evolutionary significance may simply be that as more complex creatures arose, they required more complex brains to enable the more sophisticated coordination. Out there it is survival of the fittest. It comes down to the fact that organisms at the most basic level seek to survive, i.e. find food and shelter, and to ensure the continuity of their species through breeding. At some point a swollen portion of the nervous system could no longer suffice for the task.

We must also consider the complexity of the brain instead of just its size. Whales and elephants have quite large brains but we don't see them performing the kinds of complex tasks that we as human beings do. The brain of a squid is very small but as you mentioned, they tend to be clever. The octopus is one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet yet its brain is vastly different to ours. The more complex brain enables enhanced memory and reasoning skills. What is the significance of this? I think it ties back to survival of the fittest.

The ant is an interesting example for you to include. An individual ant is really quite a simpleton. A colony of ants on the other hand, as a collective, can demonstrate some amazing behaviour. I don't think we understand how such collective thinking really works.

[Falcon]

the squid has the thickest nerve fibres in the animal kingdom, and that allows them to move and change colour (i.e. react to stimuli very very fast)

the ant is amazing in that they just follow orders for the most part, but through communicating by smell, they an exceed the most complex of engineering feats.

[letric]

To use it ...