Science News

EMBL scientists uncover counterpart of cerebral cortex in marine wormsOur cerebral cortex, or pallium, is a big part of what makes us human: art, literature and science would not exist had this most fascinating part of our brain not emerged in some less intelligent ancestor in prehistoric times. But when did this occur and what were these ancestors? Unexpectedly, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have now discovered a true counterpart of the cerebral cortex in an invertebrate, a marine worm. Their findings are published today in Cell, and give an idea of what the most ancient higher brain centres looked like, and what our distant ancestors used them for.It has long been clear that, in evolutionary terms, we share our pallium with other vertebrates, but beyond that was mystery. This is because even invertebrates that are clearly related to us ? such as the fish-like amphioxus ? appear to have no similar brain structures, nothing that points to a shared evolu