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Fundamental Theories in Neuroscience: Why Neural Darwinism Encompasses Neural Reuse

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Neural Mechanisms

Part of the book series: Studies in Brain and Mind ((SIBM,volume 17))

Abstract

Various theories have been put forward to provide theoretical unification in neuroscience. The “data rich and theory poor” state of neuroscience makes such theories worth pursuing. An overarching theory can facilitate data interpretation and provide a general framework for explanation and understanding across the various subfields of neuroscience. Neural reuse is a recent and increasingly popular attempt at such a unifying theory. At its core, neural reuse is a claim about the brain’s architecture that centers on the idea that brain regions are used for multiple tasks across multiple domains. Here, I claim that although neural reuse has many merits, it does not provide a fundamental theory of brain structure and function. Neural reuse is appropriately understood as a general organizational principle that is encompassed by a more fundamental theory. That theory is Neural Darwinism, which applies broadly Darwinian selectionist principles across scales of investigation to explain and understand brain structure and function.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks audiences at the Neural Mechanisms Online Webconference 2018 New Challenges in the Philosophy of Neuroscience and the meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology 2019 for helpful comments and questions. The author is very thankful for constructive feedback and suggestions from the editors and reviewers. This work is partially based on material from Favela (2009).

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences Program, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Luis H. Favela

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  1. Department of Letter, Philosophy, Communication, University of Bergamo LLC, Turin, Italy

    Fabrizio Calzavarini

  2. Department of Philosophy and Education, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Marco Viola

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Favela, L.H. (2021). Fundamental Theories in Neuroscience: Why Neural Darwinism Encompasses Neural Reuse. In: Calzavarini, F., Viola, M. (eds) Neural Mechanisms. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54092-0_7

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