The MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences | Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere: the way trees form branches, the way cities divide into neighborhoods, the way the brain organizes into regions. Nature loves modularity—a limited number of self-contained units that combine in different ways to perform many functions. But how does this organization arise? Does it follow a detailed genetic blueprint, or can these structures emerge on their own? 

A new study from Ila Fiete, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and director of the K. Lisa Yang Integrative and Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center, suggests a surprising answer. In findings published in Nature, Fiete, also an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, reports that a mathematical model called peak selection can explain how modules emerge without strict genetic instructions. Her team’s findings, which apply to brain systems and ecosystems, help explain how modularity occurs across nature, no matter the scale.