ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Elementary nervous systems.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- Revisiting nerve nets: functional organization and evolutionary implications.The EMBO journal · 2026Review
- External Entropy Production and Human Evolution Toward Multi-Body Life.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Neural connectome of the ctenophore statocyst.eLife · 2026Article
- The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Early transitions in the evolution of cognition.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- Voltage-gated ion channel diversity underlies neuronal excitability and nervous system evolution.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The ancient dialogue between brain and body.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Distributed neural computation and the evolution of the first brains.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- An AlphaFold guided model for the evolution of the CaMKII interactome.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Assembly of a functional neuronal circuit in embryos of an ancestral metazoan is influenced by temperature and the microbiome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Neuronal Circuit Evolution: From Development to Structure and Adaptive Significance.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2025Review
- Article
- On the prospects of basal cognition research becoming fully evolutionary: promising avenues and cautionary notes.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- Beyond the canonical niche: how astrocytes carried neurogenic potential into the brain parenchyma.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Neurogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans.Genetics · 2024Review
- Dynamics of neural activity in early nervous system evolution.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2024Article
- Integrating Multicellular Systems: Physiological Control and Degrees of Biological Individuality.Acta biotheoretica · 2023Article
- Article
- Embodied cognitive morphogenesis as a route to intelligent systems.Interface focus · 2023Article
- Peripheral and central employment of acid-sensing ion channels during early bilaterian evolution.eLife · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolutionary origin of the nervous system has been a matter of long-standing debate. This is due to the different perspectives taken. Earlier studies addressed nervous system origins at the cellular level. They focused on the selective advantage of the first neuron in its local context, and considered vertical sensory-motor reflex arcs the first nervous system. Later studies emphasized the value of the nervous system at the tissue level. Rather than acting locally, early neurons were seen as part of an elementary nerve net that enabled the horizontal coordination of tissue movements. Opinions have also differed on the nature of effector cells. While most authors have favoured contractile systems, others see the key output of the incipient nervous system in the coordination of motile cilia, or the secretion of antimicrobial peptides. I will discuss these divergent views and explore how they can be validated by molecular and single-cell data. From this survey, possible consensus emerges: (i) the first manifestation of the nervous system likely was a nerve net, whereas specialized local circuits evolved later; (ii) different nerve nets may have evolved for the coordination of contractile or cilia-driven movements; (iii) all evolving nerve nets facilitated new forms of animal behaviour with increasing body size. This article is part of the theme issue 'Basal cognition: multicellularity, neurons and the cognitive lens'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.