The human brain did not evolve through new genes. It evolved through a new control system

🧠 The human brain did not evolve through new genes. It evolved through a new control system.

A recent study (Li et al., 2025 — Quantitative Biology, Wiley) identified two moments in our evolutionary history where genetic control shifted abruptly. Not the genes themselves — but how they activate. When. With what intensity. In response to what.

Memory, language, emotion, social cognition. All shaped by those two transitions.

Not a hardware mutation.
A reconfiguration of the control system.

This invites a question that from biophysical systems science we find fundamental:

What determines when a biological system makes a qualitative leap?

Not the quantity of its components. But the coherence between available energy, integrated information, and structural friction.

This is a logic that appears in physics, in biology, in cognitive systems. And one we propose to formalize under the ISHEA Δ±1 framework.

The work of Li et al. is, from that perspective, a valuable point of convergence.

📄 DOI: 10.1002/qub2.88
🔗 ISHEA Institute | OSF: https://lnkd.in/ecCE5A8P

#Biophysics #Neuroscience #CognitiveEvolution #ComplexSystems #Epigenetics #ISHEA #SystemsBiology