Abstract
Spiking neurons appear to have evolved concurrently with the advent of animal-on-animal predation, near the onset of the Cambrian explosion 543 million years ago. We hypothesize that strong selection pressures of predator-prey interactions can explain the evolution of spiking neurons. The fossil record and molecular phylogeny indicate that animals existed without neurons for at least 100 million years prior to the Cambrian explosion. The first animals with nervous systems may have been derived sponge larvae that started feeding in the water column.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 2 |
| Journal | BMC Neuroscience |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | Suppl. 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© 2013 Monk and Paulin; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Keywords
- computational neuroscience
- computer simulation
- mathematical models
- neurons