Is the Human Mind Unique?
Scientists from many different fields gathered to discuss cognitive abilities often regarded as unique to humans including humor, morality, symbolism, creativity, and preoccupation with the minds of others. Emphasis was placed on the functional uniqueness of these attributes,
as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness, and whether these attributes are indeed quantitatively or qualitatively unique to humans.
(from carta.anthropogeny.org)
Inter-Modular Interactions, Metaphor, and the 'Great Leap'. V.S. Ramachandran (UC San Diego) argues that human mental uniqueness emerged from the fortuitous co-emergence of certain novel anatomical structures and functions and equally fortuitous synergistic interactions between them. These include structures involved in inter-sensory abstraction (IPL and its uniquely human subdivisions; supra-marginal gyrus and angular gyrus; certain frontal structures, Wernicke's area, etc.) and sensorimotor abstraction (mirror neurons). He contends that these were then adapted for higher-level abstractions such as metaphor.
| 9. Inter-Modular Interactions, Metaphor, and the 'Great Leap' |
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