Behavioral architecture of the cortical sheet

Abstract

Summary The effortless ability of vertebrates to explore and exploit their environment is strongly correlated with the evolution of the most anterior part of their nervous system, the forebrain, where data from autonomic (visceral), limbic (emotive), and internal and peripheral sensors of the external world are combined to develop, decide, and deploy advantageous behaviors. The correlation of behavioral performance with forebrain expansion suggests that evolution has discovered the developmental means of building vertebrate brains to produce a scalable, special-purpose architecture for efficiently processing and expressing behavior. In mammals, the exuberant expansion of this forebrain is dominated by the growth of their cortex — the two-dimensional sheet that is the major source of their intelligent behavior, especially for primates.