
The Strangers in Your Brain - kareemm
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-strangers-in-your-brain
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meeper16
We're now discovering, something the article does not address and that's how
epigentics play such a significant role in how we are shaped that it's
rewriting how we think about natural selection and the power of
nurture/environment over nature.

This epigentic scientist gives a stunning example here:
[https://youtu.be/9DAcJSAM_BA?t=1764](https://youtu.be/9DAcJSAM_BA?t=1764)

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toothbrush
Fascinating video, thank you!

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mirimir
This is a great article! And this is beautiful:

> According to Gage’s theory, transposons may make such transformations
> possible; they may generate novelty, and therefore complexity, in a way that
> our genes alone cannot. If this is, indeed, why they are unsilenced during
> neural development, then our brains can be thought of as hosting a kind of
> evolution in miniature. Just as the beaks of Darwin’s finches are suited to
> different food sources, each neuron may develop its own specialty in the
> ecosystem of the brain. (Immune cells make use of transposons for similar
> reasons, exploiting them in order to generate a large range of antibodies to
> tag new intruders.)

But there's a key bit of missing context, selection via programmed cell
death:[0]

> The importance of programmed cell death (PCD) during vertebrate development
> has been well established. During the development of the nervous system in
> particular, neurotrophic cell death in innervating neurons matches the
> number of neurons to the size of their target field. However, PCD also
> occurs during earlier stages of neural development, within populations of
> proliferating neural precursors and newly postmitotic neuroblasts, all of
> which are not yet fully differentiated.

[0]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001216060...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012160604005020)

