This is astounding! I would have never predicted that people's brains could regenerate at such a late stage or undergo such rearrangement without loss of function. It yields light on an implicit assumption of mine—which seems almost as outdated as phrenology now—that even if the structure of the brain is not so localized as we might want it to be, a large amount of gross structure is needed for normal cognitive function.
Instead, plasticity wins out again? The brain will proceed to function given stimulation and time despite pretty grave odds.
I am not sure that any other animal has evolved to have it's skull and brain squished hard during birth, like we have. This is why chimps outsmart human children for the first years of life. We do indeed have a very unusually plastic brain.
That is interesting. I don't think that you can say that the cause is our brain being squished during birth. I think the child lags behind at first because it has to do deeper learning and hence it takes more time. i.e. The brain is learning a lot more patterns, and patterns within patterns, than the chimp. Remember that a baby is also learning to speak. The child just has a lot more brain cells it needs to train. Although, a child at one year will already understand a lot of what you say, not sure about the chimp.
Instead, plasticity wins out again? The brain will proceed to function given stimulation and time despite pretty grave odds.