Natural Selection in Neuronal Organization: Origins of Cognition

The developmental stages of the mammalian brain are characterized by apparently the random migration of neurons. This phenomenon is perplexing on two counts. We do not have any evolutionary explanation for this neuronal migration. Second, this phenomenon eliminates any direct role of genomic control, at least in the development of neural networks. In Chap. 1, a topological model using the formalism of the involuted manifold was deployed to represent this structural agnosticism. In this chapter, we will look at the evolutionary perspective of this structural agnosticism. The core argument put forth in this chapter is that natural selection occurs at more than one level. The natural selection at the level of individual neurons is different from the natural selection occurring at the level of neural networks. It is postulated that structural agnosticism discussed in Chap. 1 arises from the mismatch between these two types of natural selection. We will discuss this scenario using the model of the involuted manifold. This leads to slight modifications to the conventional wisdom of natural selection both at the level of individual neurons and at the level of cognitive processes. A new perspective of the Darwinian paradigm that emerges from this model will be outlined here.