Brain complexity: baby brains under study (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, March 04, 2018, 11:59 (2457 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Babies are not born with identical personalities. So the personality is not a blank slate. Yes, it takes time for differences to become manifest to other people. A couple of hours maybe. But the differences are there, so what does your “blank slate” refer to? It can only be our knowledge of the baby’s personality. Nothing to do with the baby itself. Summary: we are all born with certain given characteristics (40% according to you). Environment and experience shape, develop and may even change these characteristics in a process that continues until death.

DAVID: I will agree with you that each baby is born with different potentials for personality development

Yes, you estimated that the inborn potential amounted to about 40%. No blank slate.

DAVID: Concepts modify existing brains of every size.
Dhw: Thank you. This should be remembered when we come to possible causes of brain expansion.
DAVID: But implementation need not cause enlargement but simply refine the existing networks. Please tell us how implementation causes the enlargement. Development of a concept and implementation occur in the same sized brain all the time in our species. And our brains are demonstrably smaller than in the past as we have learned how to use it efficiently over the recent centuries.

Of course it “need” not, and we know that the brain has now stopped expanding (at least for the time being) and complexification has taken over. But the brain DID expand. How? I would suggest by the same method as exercise can result in muscle expansion. I don’t know if physical/mental exercise results in additional cells or in the expansion of existing cells, but since brain expansion is a fact, and brain modification as a result of implementation is also a fact, I don’t know why you have so much trouble putting the two together.