[SydPhil] Reminder: Rirchard Menary, Macquarie @ Wed 30 Apr 2014 15:30 - 17:30 (Seminars)

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This is a reminder for:

Title: Rirchard Menary, Macquarie
Scaffolding the Cultural Brain: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

How do brains acquire the capacity to recognise and manipulate external  
symbols? The proposal of this paper is that the human brain is an open and  
adaptive system, which is functionally and structurally plastic (Li 2014,  
Menary in press). Cortical functions are modifiable by cultural scaffolds  
such as number systems and alphabets. Our brains are, in this sense,  
flexible enough to acquire new cultural functions that are not evolutionary  
endowments and this is the neural basis of how we acquire control over  
external symbol systems. I also address a problem facing an account of the  
cultural brain: how do we navigate between the Scylla of innate genetic  
constraints on the development of the brain for specialised neural  
circuitry and the Charybdis of unconstrained plasticity (Dehaene in press)?  
I sketch a model of the development of neural circuitry that underpins  
symbolic thinking, allowing for both developmental constraints and learning  
driven plasticity in the brain. Developmental pathways that include  
environmental scaffolding and learning driven plasticity can lead to  
canalisation and robustness.

When: Wed 30 Apr 2014 15:30 - 17:30 Eastern Time - Melbourne, Sydney
Where: Muniment Room, Quadrangle
Calendar: Seminars
Who:
     * Dalia Nassar- creator

Event details:  
https://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=VIEW&eid=M2pmdTNiOHRkODIzMnBucWVxc2Rra2FmaGsgMm1lN2M3ZnIzb21wbDRyaHZrcG1sYTUzNjhAZw

Invitation from Google Calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/

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