The Lamprey Pallium Provides a Blueprint of the Mammalian Motor Projections from Cortex (Current Biology)

Ocaña et al. show that the mammalian organization with a motor cortex from which different classes of movements can be elicited was present already at the dawn of vertebrate evolution, 560 million years ago, when the lamprey line of evolution diverged from that leading to mammals. Detailed connectivity and synaptic properties are also conserved.