Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, December 24, 2017, 12:19 (2308 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The adolescent brain is not a complete adult brain. That takes to about age 26. As a result adolescents are reward satisfied and risk takers:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171221122925.htm

DAVID’s comment: The obvious conclusion is the soul/self/consciousness can only use the brain that it is given to work with. This applies to all animals and to all pre-humans. The size of the pre-frontal cortex and its complexity is the only tool that can be used at a given evolutionary development level. At every level are are limits to how broadly concepts can be developed and actions started based on the size and quality of the pre-frontal cortex. I still believe ours is an endpoint with its neuroplasticity mechanisms.

What do you mean by “how broadly concepts can be developed”? The major question is how concepts arise in the first place. If they depend on the size and quality of the pre-frontal cortex, the obvious conclusion is that the pre-frontal cortex is the source of concepts, which you reject. In sapiens, it is not the size of the cortex that determines our ability to implement new concepts, but the plasticity. And for the last time today, the changes occur when we implement new concepts and not beforehand.

The sapiens brain as an endpoint does not mean that every other organism came into existence for the sake of the sapiens brain.