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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Biochemistry
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Molecular Origins of Brain and Body Geometry - Plato's Concept of Reality is Reversed (Paperback, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2014)
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Molecular Origins of Brain and Body Geometry - Plato's Concept of Reality is Reversed (Paperback, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2014)
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New concepts arise in science when apparently unrelated fields of
knowledge are put together in a coherent way. The recent results in
molecular biology allow to explain the emergence of body patterns
in animals that before could not be understood by zoologists. There
are no ”fancy curiosities” in nature. Every pattern is a
product of a molecular cascade originating in genes and a living
organism arises from the collaboration of these genes with the
outer physical environment. Tropical fishes are as startling in
their colors and geometric circles as peacocks. Tortoises are
covered with the most regular triangles, squares and concentric
circles that can be green, brown or yellow. Parallel scarlet bands
are placed side by side of black ones along the body of snakes.
Zebras and giraffes have patterns which are lessons in geometry,
with their transversal and longitudinal stripes, their circles and
other geometric figures. Monkeys, like the mandrills, have a
spectacularly colored face scarlet nose with blue parallel
flanges and yellow beard. All this geometry turns out to be highly
molecular. The genes are many and have been DNA sequenced. Besides
they not only deal with the coloration of the body but with the
development of the brain and the embryonic process. A precise
scenario of molecular events unravels in the vertebrates. It may
seem far-fetched, but the search for the origin of this geometry
made it mandatory to study the evolution of matter and the origin
of the brain. It turned out that matter from its onset is pervaded
by geometry and that the brain is also a prisoner of this ordered
construction. Moreover, the brain is capable of altering the body
geometry and the geometry of the environment changes the brain.
Nothing spectacular occurred when the brain arrived in evolution.
Not only it came after the eye, which had already established
itself long ago, but it had a modest origin. It started from
sensory cells on the skin that later aggregated into clusters of
neurons that formed ganglia. It also became evident that pigment
cells, that decide the establishment of the body pattern, originate
from the same cell population as neurons (the neural crest cells).
This is a most revealing result because it throws light on the
power that the brain has to rapidly redirect the coloration of the
body and to change its pattern. Recent experiments demonstrate how
the brain changes the body geometry at will and within seconds, an
event that could be hardly conceived earlier. Moreover, this change
is not accidental it is related to the surrounding environment and
is also used as a mating strategy. Chameleons know how to do it as
well as flat fishes and octopuses. No one would have dared to think
that the brain had its own geometry. How could the external
geometry of solids or other figures of our environment be
apprehended by neurons if these had no architecture of their own?
Astonishing was that the so called ”simple cells”, in the
neurons of the primary visual cortex, responded to a bar of light
with an axis of orientation that corresponded to the axis of the
cell’s receptive field. We tend to consider our brain a reliable
organ. But how reliable is it? From the beginning the brain is
obliged to transform reality. Brain imagery involves: form, color,
motion and sleep. Unintentionally these results led to unexpected
philosophical implications. Plato’s pivotal concept that
”forms” exist independently of the material world is reversed.
Atoms have been considered to be imaginary for 2,000 years but at
present they can be photographed, one by one, with electron
microscopes. The reason why geometry has led the way in this
inquiry is due to the fact that where there is geometry there is
utter simplicity coupled to rigorous order that underlies the
phenomenon where it is recognized. Order allows variation but
imposes at the same time a canalization that is patent in what we
call evolution.
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