can you be my collective memory for a minute, I remember the existence of a very satisfying engineering explanation for why the representation of various body parts needs to be flipped left/right in the brain that came down to the topology of the wiring, and explained why unflipped isn't feasible / or perhaps it was just less efficient, it was one of those 'mind explodes' moments, but now I can't recall the logic.
I have a similar dim memory, but (at least according to this article) invertebrate bilaterians don't have that swap at all, so it can't be too strong a constraint.
I always thought it was so if an organism takes head damage on one side, the limbs facing the danger will have a better chance to still work, giving it a better chance to fend whatever off and survive.
no there is a very specific reason, related to mapping the 2d surface of your body to a 2d mapping on your brain that allows the areas of your brain that process sensory input from your skin to be adjacent to the processing of the areas that are adjacent on the skin that only works with a flip, I can remember what that is, I only remember the tingle of understanding it at the time
Curious, let me know if you find anything about it! That does sort of explain why the brain areas would be locally flipped, but maybe doesn’t explain the global flip (right body -> left brain) that the original article is talking about.
