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Brains' social network formula dates back hundreds of millions ofyears by efwegbe erergeer
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Brains' social network formula dates back hundreds of millions ofyears |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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Newts aren't doing a lot of Facebook friending, and last timeI checked, the cormorant had not updated its relationship status.But a new neural analysis suggests that our social networking tendencies most likely have their neural roots in some of our early vertebrate ancestors. The findings were published online May 31 in Science . "There is ancient circuitry that appears to be involved insocial behavior across all vertebrates," Hans Hofmann, anassociate professor of integrative biology at the University ofTexas at Austin and co-author of the new study, said in a preparedstatement. Judging from the evolutionary family tree, Hofmanobserves, these conserved neural clusters originated at least 450million years ago. Hofmann and graduate student researcher Lauren O'Connellexamined two parts of vertebrate brains : the so-called " social behavior network ," which also includes hormones for social and sexualbehavior, and the "mesolimbic reward system," which isinvolved in dopamine signaling that activates when we engage inpleasurable behavior.
Together these two areas make up the socialdecision-making network, which helps humans, rainbow trout and wildboars know when to flirt or fight or form a posse. They foundimpressive similarities in the brains of all 88 vertebrates theystudied, which included mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians andteleost fish. "In these key brain regions, we found remarkable conservationof gene activity across species," Hofmann said. Even thoughthe general biological and behavioral differences between the newtand your next-door neighbor are (likely) pretty vast makingattempts to draw connections between neural structures and dailyactions tricky the genetic similarities should start to help.
The next step will be examining neural patterns at an even finer-grained scale to study the underpinnings of complexsocial behavior. Said Hoffman: "Now we have a framework withwhich we can ask whether there are molecular universals associatedwith social behaviors." They also noticed, however, that thelocations of some key receptors and molecules were different amongthe groups, which suggests adaptation to specific needs in theintervening millions of years. The researchers did not look into the brains of invertebrates , many of which are quite evolutionarily complex and move insemi-social groups such as squid . But for now, "On a basic level, this tells us something aboutwhere we came from," Hofmann said.
Now, whether you have enough backbone to take charge of your own social network , that's up to you. I am a professional writer from Tea, which contains a great deal of information about ceramic blow dryers , blow dryer diffuser, welcome to visit!
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