What do the Evolutionary Theory of Functional Asymmetry of the Brain and Software Delivery have in common?

Today I discovered Vigen Geodakyan and his Evolutionary Theory of Functional Asymmetry of the Brain. I am not going to judge the scientific significance of this theory, since I am not an expert in this field, but it’s already in the textbooks, if I’m not mistaken.


One of the aspects of the theory is an attempt to explain the asymmetry of the brain, assuming that one of the hemispheres is operational and the other conservative, and making the assumption that the functions controlled by the operational hemisphere are "younger" than the functions managed by the conservative.

After acquaintance with the theory, I had a persistent feeling “somewhere I already saw it”. Indeed, the described model of pinning function in the brain is very similar to the processes of software delivery.
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More information about the theory can be found here , but I will give just a few key points.

As applied to the brain, the oldest of its 3 asymmetries is the subcortex, then the forehead and the youngest (lateral hemispheric asymmetry of mental processes). ”

In the context of the analogy with software delivery, we will be interested in lateral asymmetry.

Analysis of the specialization of the left and right hemispheres allows us to conclude that the left hemisphere should be considered as the operative subsystem of the brain, and the right hemisphere should be considered as the operative subsystem. New information from the medium first goes to the left hemisphere and from it already to the right hemisphere. Functions controlled by the operational hemisphere must be evolutionarily “younger” than functions managed by the conservative.

For clarity, we simplify the lateral asymmetry before assigning one hemisphere, the left, the role of operational, and the second, right - the conservative.

Left – right asymmetrization along the dichronism idea occurs in time, i.e. the left hemisphere is “avant-garde” (as if already in the future), and the right one is “rearguard” (still in the past). The control centers of new functions appear in the left hemisphere and after testing they translocate (move) to the right.

Key to the analogy with software delivery is a way to distribute brain functions between the right and left hemispheres.

In the phylogenesis of any function, three forms of localization of its center can be distinguished: young (new) functions only in the left hemisphere (sociocultural); Mature — the bulk (past approbation) and in the left (later “versions”) and in the right (earlier); old (lost already PL) —only in the right (biological).
The left hemisphere is social, ontogenetic (phenotypic), therefore it is almost empty in the embryo (filled after birth), and the right is biological, phylogenetic (genotypic), therefore in the embryo it is full of old information.
After birth, sooner or later, the left hemisphere will inevitably be equal to the right hemisphere and will overtake it. Therefore, at some age a translocation should occur (the transition of domination of the function from one hemisphere to another), the right-hemispheric newborn should become a left-hemispheric child. In ontogeny, there can be, in principle, three translocations. The first is postnatal, from embryonic right hemisphere to “childish” left hemisphere (total, for all functions). The second is the transition of a separate function from child left hemisphere to mature right hemisphere. And the third - in case of loss of function, in the opposite direction: from adult right hemisphere to senile involution (symmetry). There is no function, there is no asymmetry, an example is the sense of smell in men (by the age of 80, 85% of the nerve fibers atrophy).

The rest of the article is followed by a diagram (highly informative) illustrating the process of assigning functions. I did not dare to use it, replacing my own version.



And now the fun part.
Let's try to draw an analogy between the process described above and the process of software delivery.
Regardless of whether you are a fan of Agile, a fan of Watefall, or an adherent of any other exotic model, you most likely use such terms as development, testing, implementation, support.

Imagine that the brain function is another patch (code drop, issue) with the next functionality, which we need to “deliver” to the customer. We develop it on our dev server, and issue it to the customer's prod accordingly (for clarity of analogy, we will include the testing server in the dev category), in this case the dev server is nothing but the left, operational hemisphere, and prod is the right, conservative one.

By simple manipulations we get the following diagram.



In my inexperienced opinion, the consolidation of the brain function, modeled in accordance with the Evolutionary theory of the functional asymmetry of the brain with a high degree of accuracy, corresponds to the process of issuing new functionality for the application. An excellent argument in favor of the thesis “everything is already invented before us” , what do you think?

A lot of human inventions, as it turned out, intuitively inherit natural processes, systems, principles of organization. But copies usually turn out much less perfect in comparison with the original.

The practical use of the study of natural phenomena is, among other things, the opportunity to improve their own inventions, watching a more perfect original. And who knows, perhaps further research on the life cycle of brain functions will give impetus to the improvement of software delivery techniques.