From: Robert Bradbury (bradbury@genebee.msu.su)
Date: Mon Apr 03 2000 - 10:42:14 MDT
On Sun, 2 Apr 2000, Jeff Allbright wrote:
> John K Clark wrote...
>
> This is an intelligence test.
>
> Question: Does having the same genes mean having the same brain?
>
Actually, John, your question is more subtle than you may realize!
Unlike, the development of C. elegans, which is completely deterministic
(the genes direct the development of each and every ~900 cells), in
humans the process is stochastic, so there are a variety of external
influences ranging from glucose availability to environmental hormones
that may result in different brains even when you have the same genes.
So, it is very hard to get "identical" brains (though you can get
idential neural nets in C. elegans), until they get "trained").
If you were commenting on the "software" running in the brain,
of course that is different.
Robert
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