Beyond cortico-centric accounts of the brain

2) Hopefully it will help eliminate the misplaced idea of "linear" brain evolution (Fig 2): pic.twitter.com/erb6IedfuH

— Luiz Pessoa (@PessoaBrain) April 19, 2022

4) "Here, we review our current understanding of how evolutionary pressures have acted across anatomically and functionally coupled networks, highlighting the diverse set of rules and principles that govern human brain development.

— Luiz Pessoa (@PessoaBrain) April 19, 2022

6) Excellent paper, highly recommend it! Check out another excellent paper that makes related points but in a much shorter format.https://t.co/lLxDNXw8uc

— Luiz Pessoa (@PessoaBrain) April 19, 2022

David Hays and I took a unified view, including phylogenetic and developmental perspectives, in Principles and Development of Natural Intelligence, Journal of Social and Biological Structures, Vol. 11, No. 8, July 1988, 293-322.

Abstract: The phenomena of natural intelligence can be grouped into five classes, and a specific principle of information processing, implemented in neural tissue, produces each class of phenomena. (1) The modal principle subserves feeling and is implemented in the reticular formation. (2) The diagonalization principle subserves coherence and is the basic principle, implemented in neocortex. (3) Action is subserved by the decision principle, which involves interlinked positive and negative feedback loops, and resides in modally differentiated cortex. (4) The problem of finitization resolves into a figural principle, implemented in secondary cortical areas; figurality resolves the conflict between pro-positional and Gestalt accounts of mental representations. (5) Finally, the phenomena of analysis reflect the action of the indexing principle, which is implemented through the neural mechanisms of language.

These principles have an intrinsic ordering (as given above) such that implementation of each principle presupposes the prior implementation of its predecessor. This ordering is preserved in phylogeny: (1) mode, vertebrates; (2) diagonalization, reptiles; (3) decision, mammals; (4) figural, primates; (5) indexing, Homo sapiens sapiens. The same ordering appears in human ontogeny and corresponds to Piaget's stages of intellectual development, and to stages of language acquisition.