User:Jtwsaddress42/Quotes/Romer, Alfred Sherwood 1972b

The Functional Welding of the CNS to the ENS - The Autonomic Nervous System "'To sum up the phylogenetic suggestions gained from a consideration of the structure of the nervous system in living vertebrates, high and low, and of their chordate and protochordate 'ancestors,' one tends strongly to gain the impression that the remote 'visceral' ancestral form had a simple superficial nerve net and, at some early stage, acquired a visceral nerve net as well; that, with the development of the 'somatic' animal, there developed the central nervous system, with segmental nerves including a ventral root of somatic motor type and a distinct dorsal root at first composed merely of somatic sensory neurons; but that there was a strong tendency for the somatic animal to attempt neural control over the visceral animal, first perhaps, by a direct connection with the important visceral muscles of the pharynx, later by an attempt to dominate the gut by autonomic fibers, originally by way of dorsal nerve roots, running to the postganglionic neurons, which represent elements of the original gut nerve net. The development of visceral centers in brain and cord was associated with this attempt at domination of the visceral by the somatic animal. But, as we are ourselves aware, the integration of the visceral animal into the dominant nervous system of our somatic being is still far from perfect.'

Alfred Sherwood Romer (1972)"