> The brain isn't like that at all; it's built out of all kinds of ASICs that have evolved for very specific functions.
That turns out not to be the case. There are some specialized modules, but stroke studies have shown that massive damage to specific functions can often be recovered by retraining. It seems that particular parts of the brain are especially good at learning particular jobs, and that when they learn a job they somehow suppress redundant learning by other regions. Much of the apparent specialization of the brain is very possibly an optimization process, akin to a computer cluster that automatically assigns I/O jobs to nodes near the mass storage.
I believe that optimizations observed are almost purely function of brain activity. Any boosts genes provide to specific regions are quantitative not qualitative in nature.
Maybe it'd be more interesting to think of it like an FPGA that can run a Verilog JIT compiler and reprogram itself when damage occurs or new information changes priorities?
That turns out not to be the case. There are some specialized modules, but stroke studies have shown that massive damage to specific functions can often be recovered by retraining. It seems that particular parts of the brain are especially good at learning particular jobs, and that when they learn a job they somehow suppress redundant learning by other regions. Much of the apparent specialization of the brain is very possibly an optimization process, akin to a computer cluster that automatically assigns I/O jobs to nodes near the mass storage.