a mental misperception about the large percentage of dormant brain activity

[Mitch Bass]

I think the book is called the Evolution of Consciousness. I am hoping someone who has read this book or has come across similar knowledge that this book seems to indicate, can help me to either affirm or deny the rumors that have or have not been told as a result of such a large part of our brain being inactive. A movie just came out that centered on the possibility that if a person could have access to the full brain than that person might develop amazing abilities. From what I have read the opposite seems to be true. An infant has access to just about the full brain and as the baby matures parts of the brain are shut down to allow for learning. The best example I seem to remember is that of learning a language. An infant will begin its life making sounds like gurgling that span the types of sounds from all languages. At this point a portion of the baby's neural pathways begin to shutdown in the areas that would allow for the sounds not utilized by the child's native language to become inactive.The name of this phenomenon if I have it right is "hedging".

 

From what I have come to understand but could be mistaken concerning, if the brain did not go through this hedging process, it would be like a city of streets with traffic lights that were all green all the time.

[Strange]

The idea that we only use 10% (or whatever) of our brains is a myth. I read a good article about this the other day (probably because of the movie you mention). I can't find that, but there are plenty more, for example:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-people-only-use-10-percent-of-their-brains/

I haven't heard of the term hedging before. But the change in how easily we can pick up language is not because part of the brain are shut down, but just because of changes in the way we learn.

 

Your example of babies learning the sounds of their language at a very young age is true. The result is that, as an adult, it is actually hard to correctly hear the sounds in a foreign language - the brain maps them on to the nearest thing in your mental model of the language. I assume this is necessary in order to be able to understand the range of different voices and accents you will come across. Of course, with practice, it is possible to learn to hear and recreate these "foreign" sounds. But most people don't make the effort which is why they speak second languages with a terrible accent!

 

But, if that was due to shutting down parts of the brain it would imply that there are parts of the brain hardwired with all the possible sounds that languages can contain. I'm fairly sure that studies have been done that indicate that the same brain areas are used for the sounds of every language.

[Mitch Bass]

 

 

But, if that was due to shutting down parts of the brain it would imply that there are parts of the brain hardwired with all the possible sounds that languages can contain. I'm fairly sure that studies have been done that indicate that the same brain areas are used for the sounds of every language.

interestingly enough in the Evolution of Consciousness, what you are indicating about parts of the brain being hardwired for all the possible sounds that languages contain (they "can"contain of hard wire limitations) is exactly the point of the idea the author talks about being true. While I am sure you are correct about the same areas of the brain being used for language, same area is where all the potential pathways exist at first of which most are shut down.

[Delta1212]

interestingly enough in the Evolution of Consciousness, what you are indicating about parts of the brain being hardwired for all the possible sounds that languages contain (they "can"contain of hard wire limitations) is exactly the point of the idea the author talks about being true. While I am sure you are correct about the same areas of the brain being used for language, same area is where all the potential pathways exist at first of which most are shut down.

I'm fairly certain that is wrong.

[Strange]

Me too. I would be interested to know what the author cites as evidence for that idea.

 

Nothing I have read on the subject suggest that the brain is hard-wired for all possible sounds, of which only a few are kept active.

 

One objection to this is that I would expect to see this being affected by evolution. If there is a genetic component to the sounds produced (which is what this claim says) then you would expect the areas of the brain associated with the local language(s) to be selected for over the others. This would also mean that the sounds in the language would not change much (because the speakers have evolved to favour those sounds). This feedback should lead to populations who were actually incapable of producing non-native sounds. None of these things are true.

 

The other objection is that it suggests that the sounds used by different languages are "quantised" - either this sound or that sound. But they aren't. There is a continuum of sounds - different languages produce different ranges of vowels which overlap and consonants which are articulated in all sorts of subtly different positions.

[CharonY]

The language recognition of infants is represented here is partly correct, but the conclusions are wrong. It is indeed true that infants can recognize the sounds of all existing languages and this has been validated in several studies. But the reason is not they use more of the brain. Rather, the brain is untrained. Once exposed to certain sounds, the infant gets better at recognizing them, i.e. parts of the areas involved in speech recognition (mostly due to changes in Wernicke's area, IIRC) get better at processing a certain language. That is at the cost of other sounds that the infant is not exposed to. It is not a loss of brain function, but rather a specialization in which certain connections get strengthened.

 

That is also why e.g. many people have trouble recognizing nuances of tonal languages, when they do not grow up with one, or the famous R/L differentiation issue of native Japanese speakers that are not exposed to other languages. In other words, during the process of learning one or several languages, we lose the ability to distinguish vowels or consonants that we are not exposed to. One can learn them later in life, though I believe other brain areas have to be recruited to do so and the learning process is different.

[MigL]

Yeah I watched ''Lucy" also.

Started out good but quickly degenerated into rubbish.

Thank goodness for Scarlett Johansen.

 

Oh, and Morgan ( Shawshank ) Freeman also.