Bioenergetics · NOTA-BIO-054
The human brain did not evolve through new genes. It evolved through a new control system
By Carlos J. Pérez Pulido · ISHEA Institute ·
A recent study by Li et al. (2025) pinpoints two moments in our evolutionary history where regulation, not genetic novelty, redrew what the human brain could do.
Note — Short piece published openly. Thinking in progress, not a result.
🧠 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
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