Abstract
Internal coordination models hold that early nervous systems evolved in the first place to coordinate internal activity at a multicellular level, most notably the use of multicellular contractility as an effector for motility. A recent example of such a model, the skin brain thesis, suggests that excitable epithelia using chemical signaling are a potential candidate as a nervous system precursor. We developed a computational model and a measure for whole body coordination to investigate the coordinative properties of such excitable epithelia. Using this measure we show that excitable epithelia can spontaneously exhibit body-scale patterns of activation. Relevant factors determining the extent of patterning are the noise level for exocytosis, relative body dimensions, and body size. In smaller bodies whole-body coordination emerges from cellular excitability and bidirectional excitatory transmission alone. Our results show that basic internal coordination as proposed by the skin brain thesis could have arisen in this potential nervous system precursor, supporting that this configuration may have played a role as a proto-neural system and requires further investigation.
Highlights
Thinking about early nervous system evolution can be cast into two general sets of models (Jékely et al, in press): 1. Input-output (IO) models: nervous systems evolved initially as a way to connect sensory input devices to effector devices (Parker, 1919; Mackie, 1990); 2
In this paper we use a computational modeling approach to investigate the internal validity of some of the assumptions made by a recent case of an internal coordination model, the skin brain thesis (Keijzer et al, 2013; Keijzer, 2015)
To test the internal coherence and plausibility of the skin brain thesis, we developed a computational model that simulates the hypothesized initial stage of early nervous system evolution
Summary
Thinking about early nervous system evolution can be cast into two general sets of models (Jékely et al, in press): 1. Input-output (IO) models: nervous systems evolved initially as a way to connect sensory input devices to effector devices (Parker, 1919; Mackie, 1990); 2. Input-output (IO) models: nervous systems evolved initially as a way to connect sensory input devices to effector devices (Parker, 1919; Mackie, 1990); 2. Internal coordination (IC) models: nervous systems evolved initially as a device to coordinate internal activity, enabling multicellular effectors (Pantin, 1956; Passano, 1963; Keijzer et al, 2013). Of these two broad scenario groups, input-output models are the most familiar and closest to how present-day nervous systems are viewed, in particular the human brain (Braitenberg, 1984). In this paper we use a computational modeling approach to investigate the internal validity of some of the assumptions made by a recent case of an internal coordination model, the skin brain thesis (Keijzer et al, 2013; Keijzer, 2015)
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