Your Brain Is Organized Like a City
A big city might seem chaotic, but somehow everything gets where it needs to go and the whole thing manages to function on most days, even if it all seems a little worse for the wear at the end of the day. Sound a bit like your brain? - - - - - - - Neurobiologist Mark Changizi sees strikingly real similarities between the two. Changizi and colleagues propose that cities and brains are organized similarly, and that the invisible hand of evolution has shaped the brain just as people have indirectly shaped cities. It's all driven by the need for organization and efficiency, the researchers say. - - - - - - - - "Natural selection has passively guided the evolution of mammalian brains throughout time, just as politicians and entrepreneurs have indirectly shaped the organization of cities large and small," said Changizi, an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute "It seems both of these invisible hands have arrived at a similar conclusion: brains a...