The Evolution of Nerve Cell Networks

Bob Greene: I used to work in a basic electrophysiology lab where I would build nerve cell networks out of dissociated cells. One thing that we often do see in the biological laboratory setting is self-organization, he says. Greene: And so the question is, if you have the foundational building blocks and you kind of put them in the right places, will they grow to have these higher order functionalities on their own? "I don't know if anybody knows the answer to that when we're looking at the silicon animal," writes Greene.