Highbrow Highjinks Come to an End

nickynicky9doors writes "The Sidney Morning Herald has an article debunking the long standing theory of our specie's dominance based on a proportionally greater development of the frontal lobe. MRI scanning suggest... 'proportionately, there is no major difference in the relative size of the frontal cortex among humans and their closest relatives.'"

Comments

Quality, Not Quantity

[cybrpnk]

The key to consciousness is in the ORGANIZATION of the neurons in the "proportionally sized" area of interest. When they show us micrographs that indicate the wiring is identical between men and other apes, then maybe I'll change my mind, but not before. You have some people (hulking linebackers) with big heads and brains (literally) and others (petite cheerleaders) with small heads and brains - but they both are equally intelligent humans (sort of...)

Language

[crow]

I've heard it suggested that what makes us different is the use of language. I think the theory goes that our species existed for a long time with little sign of intelligence. Then language was developed, and everything changed almost overnight. Key factors include not just the brain capacity for language, but the vocal capacity for language. Or so goes the theory.

I've heard of them teaching other primates to use sign language, and the results are fascinating.

So perhaps we aren't that much smarter than other primates, and hence, people studying brain mechanisms won't find the differences they're looking for.

Re:Language

[wrt2]

Actually, the experiments with teaching sign language to chimpanzees and gorillas demonstrated that human language acqusition and use are different from other primates. People are specialized to learn language; a child will learn spoken language barring severe neurological damage or neglect. (Interestingly, deaf babies have been observed babble-signing with their hands.) Further, children not only acquire pronunciation and vocabulary, but are able to fit them into syntactical grammatical frameworks of arbitrary complexity. Chimpanzees can sign "give drink fruit," but cannot tell a story. "Smarter," though, is a different issue. Chimpanzees and bonobos are brilliant at being chimpanzees and bonobos. Assuming that we don't end life on our planet, we might just be brilliant at being us.

Spina Bifida / Hydrocephalus Info

[cybrpnk]

Here's more than you ever want to know about spina bifida / hydrocephalus and how it generally affects those who have it - one of whom talks about it here. One study on IQ follow-up is here but it only says the expected problems result. My wife is a labor / delivery nurse and sees this pretty frequently, it's not pretty and just about always causes neurological damage....

Re:Oh for Cliff's Sake!

[Detritus]

Secondly, the so-called 'dominance' of our species is really self-evident in the way it's just our species that rapes the planet.

Elephants and goats can do a great job of destroying an ecosystem.