paper:doi-10-1080-19420889-2018-1433440Booting up the organism during development: Pre-behavioral functions of the vertebrate brain in guiding body morphogenesis
Original abstract (expand)
A recent study in Xenopus laevis embryos showed that the very early brain has important functions long before behavior. While the nascent brain is being constructed, it is required for normal patterning of the muscle and peripheral nerve networks, including those far away from the head. In addition to providing important developmental signals to remote tissues in normal embryogenesis, its presence is also able to render harmless exposure to specific chemicals that normally act as teratogens. These activities of the early brain can be partially compensated for in a brainless embryo by experimental modulation of neurotransmitter and ion channel signaling. Here, we discuss the major findings of this paper in the broader context of developmental physiology, neuroscience, and biomedicine. This novel function of the embryonic brain has significant implications, especially for understanding developmental toxicology and teratogenesis in the context of pharmaceutical and environmental reagents.
Related work— refs + corpus + external arXiv
Cited / in-corpus / arXiv badges show which signals surfaced each row. Multi-source rows weighted higher.
- ≈ 76%
- ≈ 76%
- Mechanics of Morphogenesis in Neural Development: in vivo, in vitro, and in silicoHamed Seyyedhosseinzadeh, Zheng Ao, Haning Xiu, Kun Gou, Feng Guo, and Zi Chen Joseph Sutlive2022≈ 76%
- ≈ 75%
- Cognition coming about: self-organisation and free-energyMaxwell Ramstead, Axel Constant, Karl Friston Ines Hipolito2020≈ 74%
- The scaling of goals via homeostasis: an evolutionary simulation, experiment and analysisJohanna Bischof, Jennifer V. LaPalme, and Michael Levin Leo Pio-Lopez2022≈ 74%
- Developmental Bioelectricity: the cognitive glue enabling evolutionary scaling from physiology to mindin corpus2023≈ 73%
- ≈ 73%
- Microelectronic Morphogenesis: Progress towards Artificial OrganismsDaniil Karnaushenko, Minshen Zhu and Oliver G. Schmidt John S. McCaskill2024≈ 73%
- Simulating Tissue Morphogenesis and SignalingSimon Tanaka, Patrick Fried, Philipp Germann and Denis Menshykau Dagmar Iber2013≈ 73%
- Engineering morphogenesis of cell clusters with differentiable programmingFrancesco Mottes, Ariana-Dalia Vlad, Michael P. Brenner, Alma dal Co Ramya Deshpande2025≈ 73%
- ≈ 73%
- The Neoplasia as embryological phenomenon and its implication in the animal evolution and the origin of cancer. I. A presentation of the neoplastic process and its connection with cell fusion and germline formationKay Saalfeld Jaime Cofre2026≈ 72%
- Closing the Loop on Morphogenesis: A Mathematical Model of Morphogenesis by Closed-Loop Reaction-DiffusionMichael Levin Joel Grodstein2022≈ 72%
- ≈ 72%
- Future of Brain Health: From Developmental Insights to Clinical TranslationMartin G Frasch, Eduardo T C\'anepa, Gerlinde A.S. Metz, Marta Cristina Antonelli, Sheehan D. Fisher and Bea R.H. Van den Bergh Mariela Chertoff2025≈ 72%
- The computational boundary of a 'self': developmental bioelectricity drives multicellularity and scale-free cognitionin corpus2019≈ 72%
- The biogenic approach to cognitionin corpus2005≈ 71%
- ≈ 70%
- Darwin's agential materials: evolutionary implications of multiscale competency in developmental biologyin corpus2023≈ 69%
- ≈ 68%
- ≈ 68%
- Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substratesin corpus2024≈ 68%
- ≈ 68%
- ≈ 67%
- ≈ 67%
- ≈ 67%
- Life as we know itin corpus2013≈ 67%
- Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Gluein corpus2024≈ 67%
- ≈ 67%
Similar preprints — Semantic Scholar
Cited by (2)
- Developmental Bioelectricity: the cognitive glue enabling evolutionary scaling from physiology to mind
Developmental bioelectricity—the network of ion channels, gap junctions, and neurotransmitter-mediated Vmem (membrane potential) dynamics operating across all body cells, not just neurons—functions as
- The computational boundary of a 'self': developmental bioelectricity drives multicellularity and scale-free cognition
Scale-Free Cognition, the framework introduced here, proposes that any coherent Self is demarcated by a 'cognitive light cone'—a spatio-temporal boundary of events a system can measure, model, and att