Recent research points to multiple stages of a brain as it goes through life. From The Guardian:
The study, based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years.
This seems to be new information, especially about the latter stages. But I remember reading Joseph Chilton Pearce (author of Crack in the Cosmic Egg) in Evolution’s End about brain ages. He suggested a pairing of neurons just before birth, then again about 2, and again at puberty, and finally as a teen. He also suggested many people did not partake in that last one, which depended on environmental factors such as relation to the mother and interaction with other people.
In each of these phases many neurons (that were’t being used) died off, and ones that were used received more myelin to insulate and increase the electric stimuli.
So I went back and looked at some reviews of his books. I remembered them stimulating, with fondness. Now I see that he was a bit of a crank, and perhaps out of his depth on the neurological front. He did like Carlos Castaneda, like I did, who turned out to be great fiction.
I’m going to look at some other authors of my highschool/college era to see if they were equally wacky.
