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Dual Brains
Topic Started: Jan 28 2011, 04:07 PM (923 Views)
Ànraich
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I was watching this thing about dinosaurs and I learned something interesting; apparently the stegosaurus had two brains. Perhaps not literally, but between their hips they had a mass of nerve cells growing on their spinal cord. It wasn't a brain brain, it was merely to help control the muscles of their back legs (as I understand it), but it raises an interesting spec idea. Could animals potentially develop secondary "sub-brains" for various purposes? Not necessarily actual brains, but something more complex than a mass of nerves. It would be a big investment evolution-wise, but then again so was sapience, but that seems to be paying off pretty well.

Maybe it could be used for highly specialized sensory organs, so that less of the actual brain's resources would be taken up (maybe a super-nose?). Or maybe in more intelligent creatures it could do the actual thinking and hold the consciousness, like a neocortex that develops separately from the actual brain.
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"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Holben
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There's always an issue with organ replication- do the advantages outweight the disadvantages? Blood needs, development time, gene compensation, adaptations to weight-bearing mechanisms, blood vessel destinations, the position of other organs etc. are all limiting factors, and usually not surmountable.
In small organisms these mean less, but.
And add to that the genes needed for a brain.

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

What's the source for the stegosaur's secondary nerve bundle/ganglion? This one mentions that the nerve bundle was used to control the tail and maintain balance.

Many of the 'younger' clades of nereid species have ganglions that govern and process sensory input. Their actual brain is located at the base of the neck, and the sensory ganglion is where we would expect the brain to be.

I don't know if I'd call this process organ duplication, at least not in the conventional sense. It's not as if the entire brain is being duplicated, only specific tasks routed to a separate specialized organ.
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Kamidio
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Admiral Parasky
Jan 28 2011, 04:07 PM
I was watching this thing about dinosaurs and I learned something interesting; apparently the stegosaurus had two brains.
Dude, I've known that since I was five. Did you have Discovery Kids as a child?
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Ddraig Goch
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A complex ganglion-pseudobrain (however's best to describe it) could be useful for animals that lead high-speed lifestyles, such as hawks and other birds of prey that hunt in forests. In more crowded, tangled forests, the extra ganglion to process sensory information that bit faster could make all the difference.
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Spugpow
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OctoPODES have a large ganglion controlling each of their tentacles semi-independently.

The "second brain" thing is almost certainly a myth.
Edited by Spugpow, Jan 28 2011, 06:46 PM.
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Ànraich
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Jan 28 2011, 05:02 PM
Admiral Parasky
Jan 28 2011, 04:07 PM
I was watching this thing about dinosaurs and I learned something interesting; apparently the stegosaurus had two brains.
Dude, I've known that since I was five. Did you have Discovery Kids as a child?
No. I didn't have a TV for most of my childhood.

EDIT: I didn't know myths could be fossilized.
Edited by Ànraich, Jan 28 2011, 07:10 PM.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Spugpow
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The cavity fossilized; the neural tissue didn't.

I remember reading that it was a "glycogen body" or something, but I'm fuzzy on the details.

In any case, it would be nice to see some recent literature backing up the idea that it was a brain.
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Zoroaster
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The stegasaurus "second brain" was standard in books about dinosaurs from before the 1970s - I remember reading it in books about dinos in the 70s... But then it got ruled out sometime in the late 70s or 80s - but it now seems the theory (based on fossils) is back - nothing better than healthy arguments and science based speculation in palaeontology

Octopuses have a "central" brain, and large ganglions on each tentacle.

I call it "distributed processing" - it makes sense, but it is probably costly to "implement" thru evolution. The neural net would have to implement some sort of "bus master" algorithm to determine which brain was in control, but it's entirely possible.

Think of your computer, a VASTLY simpler "brain", the CPU offloads certain functions, e.g. it offloads disk Input/Output to the Northbridge or other chipset, it offloads 3D display and real-time rendering and 3D calculations to the GPU in your graphics card.
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Have you read fragment? the henders rat has two brains, one which specializes in movment
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I've known this since I was 2 and could read, but I've always been ahead of my age group. I never liked stegosaurs until this year, when I fell in love with the early not quite full stegosaurs.
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http://svpow.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/lies-damned-lies-and-clash-of-the-dinosaurs/
Go to the 'Back in the Back in the Day' part and get a good-ol rant.
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Ànraich
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi

This topic isn't about the stegosaurus, it's about the possibility of an organism developing a secondary brain. The stegosaurus just got me thinking about it, I really, really don't care if some long dead reptile had two brains or not.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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--- crap - double post! ---
Edited by Zoroaster, Feb 3 2011, 05:37 AM.
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Zoroaster
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in my HZ project - on the moon Cyrus, vertebrates have several brains - distributed processing centres...

their aquatic ancestors had eyes on their "head" and abdomen, so there's optic neurons in their descendant's abdomens

their rear body "segment" is used for respiration, and expiration - the rear brain manages expiration, and vocalisation (i.e. farting etc when it exhales)

they have more ganglion bunching / brain in the centre of their body, which controls smell (thru their air intakes), inhalation, and cardio-vascular for the rear end

The have a large wrinkled up "brain" (this is the "master" brain) protected by the large bone that anchors their front limbs to their skeleton, this controls hearing, front smell, digestion and frontal cardio-vascular distribution network.

They have an optical processing centre located in their skull directly behind their main front eyes.

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