Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

224 A CREATIVE COGNITION

structure of sensory inputs. But these integrate as co ali tions to yield
higher conceptual learning and the basis of refl ective abstraction.
Across the cognitive system, the basins of attraction are continually
reshaped. Th is is pos si ble because the modifi able connections in neural
networks can assimilate structural relations. But there are also regions of
brain in which the intrinsic wiring is biased for handling some informa-
tional structures better than others. Such biases will be ones shaped by can-
alized development, as described in chapter  5. For example, in the mam-
malian brain, the initial confi gurations of the hippocampus seem to be
specially adapted to integrate spatial information and to assist memory
( because memory will be in the form of spatiotemporal par ameters, not
sequences of “stills,” as oft en assumed). Areas in the infero- temporal cortex
seem to have evolved architectures that support the abstraction of fi nely
timed movement and acoustic information (and, later, human speech).
In contrast, most regions of the cortex— those most recently evolved—
are remarkably plastic. For example, research has shown that blind
people tend to be more sensitive to diff erences in auditory pitch and touch
than people who are sighted. And individuals who are born deaf may be
better at detecting motion and “seeing” in their periphery than individu-
als with normal hearing.^21
Such fi ndings raise questions about the phenomenology of experience
and consciousness, such as what makes one set of stimuli visual and an-
other set auditory. But the impor tant point for the moment is that what
is learned— the updated network confi guration—is much more than a
mirror refl ection of the outside world. It captures the nonobvious depth
and structure behind it that furnishes predictability. It includes action
and aff ective components, and, of course, emergent aspects that have not
been directly experienced.
Note, also, that learning can be shallow or deep, depending on the
depth of statistical structure assimilated from experience. It will be as
well to remember this when we turn to learning and the school curricu-
lum in chapter 11.

Memory

Memory is a consequence of learning. However, nearly all cognitive mod-

els of memory treat information storage and retrieval as of fi xed- point

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