In the Animal Kingdom, there are may different kinds of living things. My interest is in the Chordates, or the creatures with vertibrae. My focus is on the superclass Vertebrata and the species Homo Sapien. My organs of interest are the brain, the eyes, and the spinal chord. Why? I want to attach computers to these organs. I think it is possible to bypass or improve some of the normal biological functions of the organs with computer processors and current transfer devices.
But, there is something that just popped up today that I hadn't thought about. Acorn Worms. They are in a phylum all their own, Hemichordata. They have all of the components of phyla Chordata, except they do not have a notochord. There are only 2 classes of Hemichordata, 2 classes (third proposed), and very few species that fit within the phylum. Hemichordata are considered the sister phylum of Echinodermata, or starfish. (Wow, I didn't realize they were related to starfish, that was new. I just automatically assumed they were related to the Earthworms in phylum Annelida)
Every Chordate has or has had a notochord at some point in its' development. The notochord is pretty important as far as research on the central nervous system is concerned. There is just too much data for me to sift through on the notochord itself, but I do know a local doctor who did some work on the brain and spinal cord, I think I might go drop in and say hi tomorrow or maybe even this afternoon and ask him a few questions about the notochord significance in brain development and transfer of neural "data" throughout the nervous system.
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