Brain complexity: baby brains under study (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 05, 2018, 14:40 (2237 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We only KNOW our species in life. Our heavily used brain has shrunk over the 300,000 years it has been around. That is FACT. Muscles are not surrounded by a hard case. Again: to enlarge a brain in a new species, the skull must be larger And the Mothers must adapt their pelvis.
Further please define 'implementation'. Is it new muscular coordination? Or is it more thinking in design?

dhw: Implementation as you well know is giving material form to an immaterial idea, whether that be verbal or other forms of expression, or the material construction and use of a spear that you once described so graphically yourself. Thinking in design is conceptualization, and according to you is the province of the self/soul/consciousness, and not of the brain, which does the implementing. Hence my pointing out the constantly repeated contradiction in your claim that the self is incapable of “thinking in design” without the larger brain.

Can you tell me what part of the brain is used in the implementation of making the spear after the concept appears in the pre-frontal cortex? I can, and it is a point you skip over. To make the flint tip, the stone must be shaped by the hands and arm. The wooden shaft must be obtained by walking in the woods, finding a likely branch, stripping it of bark ( by hand) and then attaching it to the tip. Learning to throw it involves coordination of arm and shoulder muscles with twisting of the spine muscles. It also involves the eyes helping the coordination in learning to throw with aim. The implementation uses the motor strip of the brain, which is in the middle of the cortex, the visual area, which is in the back, and all the muscle activity is coordinated in the cerebellum under the back of the brain itself.

Using Erectus as an example of this activity all of these areas were involved in simpler implementation activities in previous earlier hominins. In the skull fossil series, the primary enlarging region is not these. It is the prefrontal cortex where conceptual design takes place and which is the primary enlargement area.

Recognize that the s/s/c has been shown to interface in specific areas. Materialism has a role to play. My theory is not a contradiction but a careful analysis of these facts. Your approach is all theory, not recognizing how the brain works. A larger more complex prefrontal cortex permits the development of more complex concepts. Artefacts prove it.