Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 15, 2017, 14:38 (2565 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: The cerebrospinal fluid around the brain allows for this temporary expansion. Learning to write with the opposite hand is more complex than learning how to make and throw a spear. This answers the question of expansion of hominin brains. They also had a fluid area around their smaller brains which had room to expand and contract without changing skull size. Time to abandon your unsupported theory about need driving a new permanent brain size.

dhw: It’s quite extraordinary how we can read the same article and come to diametrically opposed conclusions. First of all, you are the one who keeps emphasizing that hominin brains underwent several jumps in size with a corresponding expansion of the skull. My explanation: the brain expanded and required a bigger skull. It finally reached its optimum size, which seems to be confirmed by these experiments: the brain now expands initially and then returns to its “normal” size, by which time it has rewired itself. You had never mentioned this particular type of expansion before, but that simply provides further proof that the brain expands in response to need. So that must be what happened to the hominins and hominids, until the skull could expand no more.

Did you miss or ignore the point that the brain can expand without enlarging the skull! And can shrink back as it accommodates the new complexity of connections, and as we saw in learning to read, it always shrinks back. We have no evidence for continuing expansion (in small steps), only 200cc gaps in the fossils.

dhw: Secondly, I don’t know why learning to use the opposite hand is “more complex” than learning to make and throw a spear, but in any case all the changes are CAUSED by unfamiliar activities, whether it’s spear-making and throwing, using the opposite hand, or learning to write (the Indian women). It’s crystal clear that the brain responds to needs (or desires), and changes itself accordingly. So it really is time to abandon your unsupported theory about your God expanding the brain BEFORE it could think of new concepts. Concepts activate and change the brain.

Again, skipping the knowledge the brain always shrinks back.