How can development and plasticity contribute to understanding evolution of the human brain?

Roberto Lent,Fernanda Tovar-Moll

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00208

Abstract

How can development and plasticity contribute to understanding evolution of the human brain?

Highlights

Humans usually attribute themselves the prerogative of being the pinnacle of evolution
The main challenge for research is: how do we explain this gigantic achievement of evolution? Is it a direct consequence of having acquired a brain larger than our primate ancestors, with huge numbers of computational units? Would it be determined by a particular way these units came to relate to each other, building up logic circuits of powerful capacities? What along development has “made the difference” for the construction of such a complex brain machine? How much of this complexity is innate, how much is sculpted by influence of the external world, by social interaction with our human fellows, and by the history of our own mental trajectory along life? This special issue of Frontiers addresses some of these intriguing issues
A reductionist approach is taken by Seth Dobson from Dartmouth College, and Lauren Brent from Duke University, USA

Summary

Introduction

Humans usually attribute themselves the prerogative of being the pinnacle of evolution. They have large brains with many billion neurons and glial cells (Lent et al, 2012), trillions of synapses and besides all, a plastic hardware that may change either subtly or strongly in response to the external or internal environment (Tovar-Moll et al, 2014).

Results

Conclusion