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Episode 2 05.05.2025
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What if the standard anatomical maps of the brain have been wrong for over a century, and the molecular evidence was there all along? Neuroanatomist Luis Puelles from the University of Murcia explains how developmental biology and gene expression mapping overturned the dominant columnar model of brain organization, revealing a segmental architecture that had been proposed and forgotten decades earlier. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Luis Puelles, one of the leading figures in developmental neuroanatomy, joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott at the Convergent Science Network podcast to discuss his career-long effort to replace the columnar model of brain organization with a prosomeric model grounded in embryological evidence. The conversation traces Puelles’ intellectual trajectory from an initial interest in how the mind emerges from the brain, through frustration with psychology disconnected from neurobiology, to decades of work on the spatial organization of the developing neural tube. The central argument is that brain boundaries are transversal to the neural tube axis, not longitudinal as the dominant American school proposed since 1910. Puelles describes how he arrived at this conclusion through morphological observation of embryos long before molecular genetics provided confirmation. When gene expression mapping became possible, the data immediately validated his model, showing that genes code for boundaries exactly where his framework predicted them. The conversation explores the historical context of the competing columnar model proposed by Herrick, which extrapolated brainstem nerve component analysis to the entire forebrain without embryological support. Puelles explains why this model persisted for 60 years despite being inconsistent with developmental biology: it offered functional interpretations that appealed to the field, even though those interpretations lacked causal mechanisms. His collaboration with molecular biologist John Rubenstein proved pivotal, combining Puelles’ morphological expertise with gene expression data that other embryologists had dismissed as meaningless. The discussion addresses the relationship between structure and function in neuroscience, with Puelles arguing that understanding morphology requires understanding development, and that functional analysis must be consistent with the causal mechanisms operating in the embryo. Part of the Convergent Science Network podcast series from the BCBT Winter School.
Tagged as:
Brain Columnar Model Developmental Biology Gene Expression Molecular neuroanatomy prosomeric model
About the author call_made
Both the triumphs of humanity and its most evil deeds have resulted from collaboration. In a time where humanity is required to aspire to the former and minimize the latter, the question arises of how collaboration arises and why it fails. Surprisingly, this phenomenon, so central to who we are, is not well understood. Hence, a collaborative effort is required to understand collaboration in its full biological, psychological, sociological, cultural, and economic complexity and to translate this understanding into operational impact. This series of podcasts is one step toward achieving these complementary goals. The Collaboration Podcast presents interviews with people who are central orchestrators of collaboration in various domains including business, government, science, art, health, sustainability, and the military. The discussions were conducted by Prof. Dr. Paul F.M.J. Verschure and members of the Program Advisory Committee of the Ernst Strungmann Forum on Collaboration (https://www.esforum.de/forums/ESF32_Collaboration.html) during 2021 and had the goal to sketch a map of opportunities, challenges, and obstacles in human collaboration. The forum took place in May 2022, and now we would like to share this series of interviews with a broader audience. The full report of the Forum will be published in 2023 by MIT Press. The podcast was produced by the Convergent Science Network (https://www.convergentsciencenetwork.org/). Context: The stability of social systems depends critically on realizing sustainable methods of “collaboration,” yet how and by which means collaboration is achieved is not clearly understood; neither are the conditions or processes that lead to its breakdown or failure. Collaboration can be understood as cooperation between agents toward mutually constructed goals. Part of the reason for our lack of understanding is that the phenomenon of collaboration is, by nature, a highly multidisciplinary problem, and effective research into its complexities has been difficult to achieve across the broad range of scientific and technical disciplines involved. The need for a fundamental understanding of collaboration, however, has become increasingly important. Not only does humankind demand answers as it attempts to address critical challenges at multiple scales (e.g., climate change, migration, enhanced automation, social and economic inequality), but ever-increasing technological and economic means of interconnecting people and societies are disrupting long-established, familiar patterns of how we interact. Radical technological changes that are ongoing have the potential to reshape collaboration in ways that are currently hard to predict or influence (e.g., by altering configurations in interaction, information creation, and modes of communication). On one hand, such changes could disrupt hitherto stable forms of collaboration by affecting critical communication channels and traditional roles, as can be observed in the rapidly changing patterns in governance, commerce, and social interaction. Conversely, technology could lead to the emergence of novel, successful forms of collaboration that deviate from traditional “hierarchical” architectures. Evidence of this can be seen in areas as diverse as highly automated manufacturing plants, the open science movement, collaborative software repositories, user-centered services, and the sharing of economy-based modes of organization. Without a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms, processes, and boundary conditions of collaboration, it is not possible to evaluate or predict which of these possible scenarios are sustainable or even plausible. The Forum “How Collaboration Arises and Why it Fails” (May 8–13, 2022, Location: Frankfurt am Main, Germany) Chairs: Andreas Roepstorff and Paul Verschure Program Advisory Committee: Jenna Bednar, Julia R. Lupp, Bhavani R. Rao , Andreas Roepstorff, Ferdinand von Siemens, and Paul Verschure
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