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%CORTICAL BIFURCATION 780403
In evolutionary terms what survival value occasioned
cortical bifurcation---the tendency for specialization of
left and right halves of the homo-sapiens cortex?
It would appear that initially the cortex developed
with redundancy; i.e., two like halves offering the
advantage that damage to one half left the organism still
functional and able to reproduce. Initially duplicate
brain halves had survival value simply as "back-up"
support in the event one was damaged.
As the contextual environment of homo-sapiens evolved
it may be that those individuals most capable of
coordinated activity had greater ability to survive than
those individuals that acted independently. Coordinated
activity is made possible by various forms of language.
Language also facilitates internal representations to self
of external processes---and so makes possible the
development of understanding and prediction. Coordinated
behavior is made possible by anticipation of the likely
consequences of various behaviors, and through language
the sharing of such anticipation, and so the coordination
of behavior to achieve some commonly selected goal. Thus
language, understanding, prediction, coordination, and
similar functions offered survival value. At the same
time there was survival value in mental functions which
were holistic and more immediately sensoral-mode
oriented. Those individuals who through mutation
specialized both halves of the cortex into either
language/anticipation or holistic/sensoral functions were
probably not as able to survive as those who specialized
one redundant half of the brain one way, and the other
redundant half the other way. There was survival value in
having both capabilities in separately specialized halves.
The separate specializations offered survival
advantages, but generated the problem of inter-
communication between the separately specialized halves.
With each half specialized in a different way the
"language" of each half became different than the language
of the other half. This occasioned the problem of
facilitating communication between the two halves, and of
centralizing decision making. To centralize decision
making in one half of the brain may have been of little
survival value---and so perhaps the compromise was to
evolve a creature in which the "will" oscillates back and
forth between complementary halves of the brain.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
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