DOI: 10.11648/j.ss.20261504.15 ISSN: 2326-988X

Probable Relationship Between Neoteny in Human Brain Development and the Ability of Working Memory to Represent Novel Stimuli

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In this review we detail a series of studies and investigations that lead us to ask: Is it possible that the neoteny experienced during our cognitive development could be related to the end of a General Learning process in non-human primates (a phase in which knowledge is acquired about the possibilities offered by objects and subjects in the environment and information about the possibilities offered by interactions with them, in addition to knowledge about the characteristics of the ecological and social environment in which we live)? Furthermore, the information analyzed in this work also leads us to ask: Is it possible that the end of this General Learning process in non-human primates could be due to the fact that their working memory could lose a significant part of its capacity to represent novel stimuli around the time of food independence? And if this were so, could the characteristic neoteny of human cognitive development (the condition presumably responsible for our exceptional cognitive ability) consist of H. sapiens maintaining the working memory capacity to represent novel stimuli active after youth, thus making General Learning possible during the adult stage of life? The analysis we have developed in this review leads us to give an affirmative answer to these questions, concluding that the capacity of working memory to maintain the representation of novel stimuli could have been, by continuing to function in the adult stage of life in the lineage of individuals that led to Homo sapiens, the necessary and sufficient quality for the distinct cognitive development that characterizes our species to begin.

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