While those portions of the brain aren't specific to learning intellectual or academic information, they might be crucial to making sense of data, help in testing what we learn, and help bridge countless gaps between model/simulation and reality (whatever that is). Hopefully that makes sense. Sort of like... Holistic learning.

I wonder if our brains and bodies are not all that separate, and the intangible features of that unity might be very difficult to quantify and replicate in silica.

We can say that such and such part of the brain is "for" this or that. Then it releases neurotransmitters or changes the level of hormones in your body which in turn have cascading effects, and at this point information theory would like to have a word.

"If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it!" -Richard Feynmann

Reality only computes at the level of quarks - a less wrong post

It's really interesting that human organism requires so much computational power to support live.

I think it's even more interesting that the required amount of energy to do that high computational work isn't that high. Evolution has been working on it for a long time, and some things are really inefficient but overall it does an OK job at making squishy machines.

The human brain uses roughly 20 watts, which is really a remarkably low number.

https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/12386

That's 20% of total energy consumption.

I had a good chuckle at "squishy machines". That's a really interesting way to think about it. It makes me wonder if, some day, we will be able to build "squishy machines" of our own, capable of outperforming silicon while using a tiny fraction of the energy.

Not really, as we only use 10% of our brains. /s

on top of that I would add that humans have very high DPI touch sensors across full body (skin)