They believed that the brains of extant vertebrates retained ancestral structures, and, therefore, that the origin of specific human brain subdivisions could be traced back in time by examining the brains of extant non-human vertebrates. Edinger and other early comparative neurobiologists combined Darwin’s concept of ‘evolution’ with the nineteenth-century version of Aristotle’s ‘ scala naturae’, which resulted in the view that evolution was progressive and unilinear 5 - from fish, to amphibians, to reptiles, to birds and mammals, to primates and, finally, to humans - ascending from ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ intelligence in a chronological series. Inspired by Darwin’s theory, between 18 Edinger formulated an influential, evolution-based model of brain organization 1, 3, 4.
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The classical view of telencephalic evolution, which is still prevalent in classrooms and textbooks, began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after the publication of The Origin of Species by Darwin 2. We then present the new nomenclature that has been developed by the Avian Brain Nomenclature Forum, and discuss its implications for our understanding of vertebrate brain evolution and its associated homologies. In this article, we summarize the traditional view of telencephalic evolution before reviewing more recent findings and insights. White, Keiko Yamamoto, Jing Yu, Anton Reiner and Ann B. Mello, Alice Powers, Connie Siang, Tom V. Hough, Scott Husband, Lubica Kubikova, Diane W. Perkel, Toru Shimizu, Georg Striedter, J. Jarvis, Onur Güntürkün, Laura Bruce, András Csillag, Harvey Karten, Wayne Kuenzel, Loreta Medina, George Paxinos, David J. (For author affiliations see online supplementary information S1 (box).)Įrich D. This change in terminology is part of a new understanding of vertebrate brain evolution.īox 1 Avian Brain Nomenclature ConsortiumĪuthors are ordered alphabetically in two groups: the first group, along with the first two and last two authors, are the core Avian Brain Nomenclature Forum Thinktank group the second group are professors, postdoctoral fellows and students who also participated in the Avian Brain Nomenclature Forum.
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To eliminate these misconceptions, an international forum of neuroscientists ( BOX 1) has, for the first time in 100 years, developed new terminology that more accurately reflects our current understanding of the avian cerebrum and its homologies with mammals. Although the avian pallium is nuclear, and the mammalian cortex is laminar in organization, the avian pallium supports cognitive abilities similar to, and for some species more advanced than, those of many mammals. The avian cerebrum has a large pallial territory that performs functions similar to those of the mammalian cortex. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, there accumulated a wealth of evidence that these viewpoints were incorrect. According to this theory, the avian cerebrum is almost entirely composed of basal ganglia, the basal ganglia is involved in only instinctive behaviour, and the malleable behaviour that is thought to typify mammals exclusively requires the so-called neocortex. This resulted in terms and associated concepts such as palaeostriatum, archistriatum, neostriatum and neocortex that are still in common use.
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One hundred years ago, Edinger, the father of comparative neuroanatomy, formulated a unified theory of brain evolution that formed the basis of a nomenclature that has been used to define the cerebral subdivisions of all vertebrates 1.