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Origin and evolution of the nervous system

09 - 10 March 2015 09:00 - 17:00

Scientific discussion meeting organised by Professor Nicholas Strausfeld FRS and Dr Frank Hirth

Event details

The origin of brains and central nervous systems is thought to have occurred before the Paleozoic era. Yet in the absence of tangible evidence there has been continued debate whether today’s brains derive from one ancestral origin or whether similarities amongst them are due to convergent evolution. This meeting will consider the origin of nervous systems, integrating knowledge ranging from evolutionary theory and palaeontology to comparative developmental genetics and phylogenomics. It will cover discoveries of fossil brains, as well as correspondences of neural circuit organisation and behaviours, all of which allow evidence-based debates for and against the proposition that the nervous systems and brains of animals all derive from a common ancestor.

Abstracts and biographies of the organisers and speakers are available below. Papers from the meeting will be published in a future issue of Philosophical Transactions B.

Attending this event

This event has already taken place. Recorded audio of the presentations can be found below.

This meeting was immediately followed by a related, two-day satellite meeting, Homology and convergence in nervous system evolution, at the Royal Society at Chicheley Hall, home of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre.

Enquiries: Contact the events team

 

Organisers

  • Professor Nicholas Strausfeld FRS, University of Arizona, USA

    Nicholas Strausfeld received his BSc and PhD from University College London. After postdoctoral research at the University of Frankfurt as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow he joined the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen and from there moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in 1975. He took his habilitation at the University of Frankfurt in 1986 and then moved to the University of Arizona. He received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1994, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1995, an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Prize in 2001, and a Volkswagen Stiftung Visiting Professorship in 2009. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2002. He is presently a Regents' Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Director of the University of Arizona's Center for Insect Science. He has authored two books: “Atlas of an Insect Brain” (1976) and “Arthropod Brains: Evolution, Functional Elegance, and Historical Significance” (2012).

  • Dr Frank Hirth, King's College London, UK

    Frank Hirth is a senior lecturer and principal investigator at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London. He received his PhD in Zoology at the University of Basel in Switzerland and trained in neurogenetics at the universities of Freiburg, Basel and the MRC National Institute of Medical Research in London. During his time at the Institute of Zoology in Basel, he discovered evolutionary conserved genetic mechanisms underlying pattern formation in the insect and mammalian brain. His current research focuses on neural mechanisms underlying action selection in health and disease, and their evolutionary conservation.