science

In a way, yes. Breathing is a very interesting case here. Breathing is controlled by both sides, actually. At night, you don't want to have to think about breathing in, breathing out. But for diving and swimming and speaking, you need precise and active control.

So there is a complex mechanism to hand over the control from one side to the other. Sudden infant death syndrome is probably linked to the development of this handover process.

Lizard v Monkey brain as the kids say