The subject of *brain function* and the sense of self is quite appropriate here, I think (speaking as a philosopher), and of course "Buddhist/philosophical" isn't necessarily something that's in opposition to empiricism (which isn't the whole of science anyway, just a linchpin of it), unless one's Buddhism and/or philosophy has been infected by the deadly New Age Crapola virus, one of the symptoms of which is an uninformed dismissal of science with buzz words like "scientism", which had a much more circumscribed sense, in the context of phenomenology, when it was coined by Husserl, long before it was hijacked by the woo crowd and the nuttier extremes of pomo thought. (I do like some postmodernists.)

One thing that's intriguing to me is the bit about cortical development in the womb. I was six weeks premature, and an underweight twin to boot, and spent those six weeks in an incubator, recovering from pneumonia. (Which killed my twin.) From what the article says, you'd think I'd be cortically disadvantaged, but I have above-average intelligence. (I've always scored much higher on various tests than my two normal-term brothers.) I wonder if my unusual configuration, from being a mirror twin*, helped in some way to overcome this developmental handicap... Or it's possible that I made up the difference in development during or even *after* those six weeks. If so, it would seem that it's not so much being in the womb that's crucial in the final weeks as *not* having certain environmental disruptions during the equivalent time in the neonatal ICU. Maybe I was just lucky in that regard, compared to other preemies. (It was a German hospital, the Schwabinger Krankenhaus in Munich, staffed by US Army doctors at the time, and likely had some of the best facilities for its time.)

Though the article doesn't really mention it, it's possible that "every* preemie eventually makes up the deficit, at least to some degree. But they seem to be implying that, nonetheless, there's something crucial about the final weeks of the nine months. Anyone know more about this?

*As I've mentioned before, my Broca's area and Wernicke's area are on the opposite side (the right) from where they normally are in most people (tests and diagnoses at various Boston hospitals after I suffered a stroke-like hemiperetic migraine showed this), and like many left-handed people (and musicians, according to the wiki), I likely have a thicker corpus callosum. (Whether the c.c. has any relevance to the process of folding development is way beyond my expertise, but it's natural to wonder.)

From the article:

"Van Essen has created a cortical atlas, which compiles brain-imaging data to reveal variations in the topography of the cortex. Because even normal brains vary in the precise folding patterns, Van Essen’s atlas combines data from many individuals to create representations of what folding looks like in an average brain at various stages of development. And as the atlas evolves, it’s beginning to include images of what can happen when the surface of the cortex doesn’t develop as expected.

For example, because so much of the folding takes place during the latter weeks of fetal development, premature infants arrive with much of their cortical development yet to be completed. And the folding patterns of preemies relegated to the neonatal intensive care unit don’t match those of their counterparts who spend their full nine months in the womb. New research from Van Essen’s lab shows that even when preemies reach their originally forecasted due dates, their brains are not as large or as folded as those of full-term newborns.

“That means there’s something different in how those brains are organized and in the connections that have formed,’’ Grant said. Perhaps some extra environmental influence in the hospital is disrupting folding or preemies are missing out on some vital influence that their counterparts get in the uterus, though researchers haven’t yet narrowed down what these influences may be."

teach that, I mean

Canela - Why did you ask to join this tribe if you don't care about brains? Right now you just seem to want to be unpleasant rather than share in discussing brains in any real way. Remember, this tribe is about science and all you've been asked to do is back up an assertion you're making that may or may not be accurate. If you're not actually interested in the subject of this tribe, why are you here?