Brain complexity: newborn neuron migration (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 08, 2016, 12:38 (2968 days ago) @ David Turell

David's comment: This method of supplying enough neurons for the large frontal lobe to develop properly is amazing. Four centimeters of migration. How do they know where to go? What guides them to the proper spots? But obviously a large supply is needed to begin to plastically respond to the newborn as it experiences life and begins to be able to understand and reason. If evolutionary changes in an organ are driven by need where did the need come from to jump to a final Homo species to enlarge the frontal lobe? Previous species did not know what they did not know, i.e., the ability of H. sapiens brains to think. This huge gap in development occurred and then was learned to be used. The H. sapiens brain is the same as it was 200,000 years ago in volume but much more complex because it was given the ability to respond to use, by methods such as migration of neurons! Saltation. God. (dhw's bold) - Twice you have pointed out that the supply of neurons/the complexity of the brain is a RESPONSE to experience/understanding/reasoning/use. You are a dualist. This can only mean that as consciousness has more and more things to be conscious of, the brain complexifies in order to contain and process the ever increasing amount of information provided by consciousness. Under “Egnor” you claim that form appears before function. But according to your own comment, form (brain complexification) is a response to function (experience, understanding, reasoning, use), and so function comes first.