Different in degree or kind: Moe plasticity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 25, 2015, 15:47 (3286 days ago) @ David Turell

Our brains do a lots more plasticity changes from birth than chimps. Their brains are more fixed in place:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-our-brains-special/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20151124-"Plasticity may be what underlies the specific differences in our brain that lead to our unique cognitive abilities. A study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that human brains may be less genetically inheritable, and therefore more plastic, than those of chimpanzees, our closest ancestors.-"Aida Gómez-Robles, an anthropologist at The George Washington University, and her colleagues compared the effect of genes on brain size and organization in 218 human and 206 chimpanzee brains. They found that although brain size was highly heritable in both species, the organization of the cerebral cortex—especially in areas involved in higher-order cognition functions—was much less genetically controlled in humans than in chimps. One potential explanation for this difference, according to the researchers, is that because our brains are less developed than those of our primate cousins at birth, it creates a longer period during which we can be molded by our surroundings."-Comment: As I have been saying, our brains are built to cooperate with us as we develop from infancy. Baby brains are small having to travel a narrow birth canal. They are 1/4 of the body size at birth and become 1/8 body size as an adult.