Secondly, it's quite plausible that any number of co-factors, from diet to enviroment to social bonding etc, play a singificant factor in how the brain develops. My understanding is that a even long-term preference of carbs over proteins can cause measurable changes to pituitary function. All that Rakic & co have proven is that monkeys in labs, who probably didn't have a professional nutrionist to advice them, and may not even like living surrounded by concrete walls, without the smell of feral monkeys of the other sex, a natural day-night rythm, no abnormal magnetic fields etc.. didn't show much change in experiments by researchers who would otherwise have to explain how they used decades of grant money to produce risible "science."
As you may know, children with hydrocephalus, in which the brain traps water, often are labeled as "retarded" "developmentally challenged" etc, and unable to fully participate in life, simply because of a totally abnormal and not proscribed brain form. And yet at least one girl, with MRIs of a brain an inch thick coating her skull, and the requisite shunt, made it through university and teaches high school. I assume her parents decided to do without the years of "playing doctor," "protecting their child" and of course, "paying the bills."
In a similar vein, a relative of mine, fell off of the running board of a rolling Model A in the 1930s, and busted his skull open. His family had emigrated to the olde Texas from Palermo in the 20s, when men were men, both in Palermo and Texas. His dad brought him to the ER, where he was told that there was nothing more that they could do for him his time had come. His father - at the time Italians were a lesser breed in Texas - looked the doctors in they eyes, and said "He dies, you die." The relative is now in his 80s, and, as far as I know, the doctors all died "natural" deaths.
Secondly, it's quite plausible that any number of co-factors, from diet to enviroment to social bonding etc, play a singificant factor in how the brain develops. My understanding is that a even long-term preference of carbs over proteins can cause measurable changes to pituitary function. All that Rakic & co have proven is that monkeys in labs, who probably didn't have a professional nutrionist to advice them, and may not even like living surrounded by concrete walls, without the smell of feral monkeys of the other sex, a natural day-night rythm, no abnormal magnetic fields etc.. didn't show much change in experiments by researchers who would otherwise have to explain how they used decades of grant money to produce risible "science."
Key point worth repeating. Looking forward to seeing how Rakic et al. addressed this in the study. :-))