Brain complexity: newborn neuron migration (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 08, 2016, 15:23 (2750 days ago) @ dhw

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)
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> dhw: Twice you have pointed out that the supply of neurons/the complexity of the brain is a RESPONSE to experience/understanding/reasoning/use.-No. the migrating neurons are supplied first, before there is any experience to modify them, The newborn brain starts as a blank slate. -> dhw: 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. -True.-> dhw: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.-No, size and capacity comes first. One learns how to use one's brain. 200,000 years ago H sapiens was given a new sized brain but, at first used it like his predecessors. With time the brain came to be our modern one today, but each infant starts the same way.-Interestingly you make no comment about the process itself of enhancing the frontal lobe. That is my key point, the amazing complexity. The early Homos were far better off than the apes. The advance to a bigger brain was not needed. There is obviously a supplied drive to complexity.