Production Logistics and Crowd Dynamics in the Developing Cerebral Cortex

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The cerebral cortex is constructed through massive cell-production and accompanying cellular movements, which should be efficient and safe under spatiotemporal limitations. Efficiency and safety are also needed in the "production logistics" of manufacturing companies, and the "crowd dynamics" pertaining to people or vehicles. Investigating the growth of the embryonic cerebral cortex with an insight into such a system-level management of collective flows has recently revealed interesting cellular strategies to combat the spatiotemporal limitations. First, two sibling cells enter a narrow outflow space to overcome a bottleneck via a sequential departure similar to staggered commuting. This is achieved by asymmetric inheritance from the mother cell to one of the sibling cells with respect to cellular structure, and is analogous to a priority boarding pass. Second, newly generated sibling cells passively propel due to a mechanical force from the surrounding space. This space, densely filled with neighboring cells' processes, is elastic and assists in an indirect mother-to-daughter energy transfer. The mother cell has stored mechanical energy during its lateral/centrifugal expansion stage of mitosis while the surrounding space centripetally recoils to push the daughter cells. Third, young neurons act as a mechanical barrier to the movement of the mother cells thereby ensuring their normal proliferation.