Parasitic Fish Reveal Insights into Brain Evolution

What can this squiggling, toothed eel-like creature possible tell us about our own brains? Well, the lamprey, although ugly, occupies a pivotal place in the evolutionary tree. Research on captive lampreys can tell us about the earliest evolution of the vertebrate brain and yield insights that may help to cure and treat neurological disease. A new study published in Nature last month suggests that the human pattern of development in an important region of our brains may have evolved much earlier than we thought, in a creature that looks much like a modern-day lamprey. So perhaps lampreys can tell us more about our brains than you might have thought!

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