PSYA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Midbrain Tectum, Prenatal Development, Cerebral Cortex
Document Summary
Far from being a single, elegant machine the enchanted loom the philosophers wrote so poetically about the human brain is instead a system comprised of many distinct components that have been added at different times during the course of evolution. The human species has retained what worked best in earlier versions of the brain, then added bits and pieces to get us to our present state through evolution. To understand the organization of the nervous system it is helpful to consider both its development in the uterus and its evolution over time. The first approach reveals how the nervous system develops and changes within each member of a species, whereas the second approach reveals how the nervous system in humans evolved and adapted from other species. Both approaches help us understand how the human brain came to be the way it is. The nervous system is the first major bodily system to take form in an embryo.
