Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside
Cesario, Johnson and Eisthen argue that a common belief in psychology is wrong: that newer brain regions were layered on top of older ones as vertebrates evolved, and that the newer regions gave complex animals advanced abilities. Introductory psychology textbooks still teach this idea, while neurobiologists have largely rejected it and specialists in nervous-system evolution broadly agree. The authors outline a more accurate account of how neural systems evolved, give examples of how the outdated view may have slowed progress in psychology, and urge researchers to drop it.
Cesario, Johnson and Eisthen argue that a common belief in psychology is wrong: that newer brain regions were layered on top of older ones as vertebrates evolved, and that the newer regions gave complex animals advanced abilities. Introductory psychology textbooks still teach this idea, while neurobiologists have largely rejected it and specialists in nervous-system evolution broadly agree. The authors outline a more accurate account of how neural systems evolved, give examples of how the outdated view may have slowed progress in psychology, and urge researchers to drop it.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-26 via OpenAlex.
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doi:10.1177/0963721420917687. Read at the level of the abstract.