Neural Darwinism

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Neural Darwinism is a biological, and more specifically Darwinian and selectionist, approach to understanding global brain function, originally proposed by American biologist, researcher and Nobel-Prize recipient^[1] Gerald Maurice Edelman (July 1, 1929 – May 17, 2014). Edelman's 1987 book Neural Darwinism^[2] introduced the public to the theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS), a theory that attempts to explain global brain function.

TNGS (also referred to as the theory of neural Darwinism) has roots going back to Edelman and Mountcastle's 1978 book, The Mindful Brain – Cortical Organization and the Group-selective Theory of Higher Brain Function, which describes the columnar structure of the cortical groups within the neocortex,^[3] and argues for selective processes operating among degenerate primary repertoires of neuronal groups.^[4] The development of neural Darwinism was deeply influenced by work in the fields of immunology, embryology, and neuroscience, as well as Edelman's methodological commitment to the idea of selection as the unifying foundation of the biological sciences.