Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, November 19, 2017, 15:29 (2561 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Are you agreeing that ancient homo brains had the same expansion/contraction mechanism we have now?

dhw: None of us were around to conduct experiments on the workings of their brains, but ancient brains inside their little skulls may well have contracted and expanded a little bit. However, as the new concepts and tasks multiplied, the brain would have required increased capacity. Any rewiring would have been inadequate to cope. Hence expansion of the brain, and expansion of the skull to accommodate the expanded brain.

At least you seem now to have accepted that the brain expands/rewires IN RESPONSE to new concepts and tasks, which does away with the whole idea that your God expanded it before hominins, hominids and homos came up with their new concepts.

Once I found the studies, I've always understood that the brain expands to handle new activities and then contacts as the new networks are reorganized. And you have accepted the probability that this mechanism probably goes back to pre-homo times. Skull size thus is constant.

dhw: […] Once more: if Habilis’s brain had been able to cope, it would not have expanded, and nor would the skull.
DAVID: Based on processes we see now your point makes no sense if habilis had the same brain process.

dhw: This is like saying that if habilis had the same sized brain as we have, it wouldn’t have needed to expand! The process would have been the same: brain expanding (and possibly contracting) but in habilis’s case the capacity was not large enough to fulfil his needs, so it had to expand, just as would have happened with his predecessors and with later homos in the line leading to us.

Note above no need to expand skull as brain contracts.

dhw: […] As you say, the mechanisms now are basically the same as in the past; new tasks lead to expansion, but now the expansion gives way to rewiring.
DAVID: I'm saying that rewiring occurred in habilis onward.

dhw: I don’t know when rewiring started to occur, and nor do you. What we do know is that habilis’s brain was about half the size of ours, and was presumably bigger than that of his ancestors: rewiring would only have worked so long as it could cope with the tasks required, but then there had to be more expansion, which we know occurs IN RESPONSE to need.

You keep forgetting, if you don't know what you don't know and at the habilis state they only needed survival skills, how much need is present? I repeat the point for which I haven't found your answer: Sapiens brain is 300,000 years old and smaller now than before. We are filled with an exponential growth of ideas and concepts that encompass graduate schools of education to teach or understand them. Where is your 'required expansion'?