Brain complexity: fine-tuned for selective hearing (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 22, 2017, 15:25 (2528 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You keep ignoring the requirements of a survival mode of living. Haven't you ever camped out for a week of so? No phone. No books. Just nature: shelter, movement, finding food, fire, and a small socila group. Literally does not require the brain we have now in an civilized city. How many concepts did humans have 10,000 years ago? A miniscule amount compared to now. Luckily God provided us with one big enough to encompass it all. Where were all the stone age concepts to force a 200 cc final enlargement? Non-existent.

dhw: But what you in turn keep ignoring is that the brain RESPONDS to new concepts. It does not change in anticipation of them. I don’t know why you are so preoccupied with camping, but since it’s so important to you, yes I have, probably in far more arduous circumstances than you, when a series of accidents left a group of us stranded on the edge of the Sahara desert! Your survival mode camper and your so-called primitive tribesman have the same sized brain, and no individual can possibly exhaust the full potential of the human mind, but that potential does not depend on the SIZE of the brain, which has stopped expanding!

You have not commented on the size of cortex. The pre-frontal cortex of the modern human is a highly complex network of neurons and branched axons and it is that additiion that added 200cc to the skull size to contain this enlargement. To contain all of its complexity it is highly convoluted. That predicessors did not have this type of brain is shown by existing fossil skulls. Neanderthal skulls make the point. Their brains were bigger but their pre-frontal cortex was not as large. That advanced area arrived 290,000 years before we really began to have advanded concepts as we civilized. Obviously size came first and then use which didn't have to expand the brain b ecasue the cortex was so advanced and had the ability of neuroplasticity as you point out. The time table tells the story, no matter how much you twist and turn the logic.