In this view the brain is like a toolbox, of which we only ever use the hammer. We usually have in mind conscious thought here, but the vast majority of our brain functions occur sub-consciously, we comprise many hundreds of modules each specialised in a particular task, and arranged in interconnected layers. The interconnection of these building blocks, like a Lego kit, allows an infinite variety of structures to be assembled. Their interconnections are made by our neural wiring and this reflects the associations and analogies that we make within our world of experience. We can also revise these modules, improving them and constructing new ones, building upon the genetic foundations of our inheritance and erecting as a result skyscrapers of towering achievement in science, art, technology and spirit.
Brain evolution is very open ended.
The eye, the ear, the nose, the skin all have vast numbers of receptor cells, hundreds of millions in total, each providing at least one bit of information. But this mapping between the senses and the brain depends to a large extent on exercise, if we do not stimulate or use a sense it atrophies, just as muscles do. The area of brain concerned will gradually lose efficiency and can even change its function in order to respond to a quite different sense or modality. We need to consider our senses as complex apparatus and train them to respond to subtle clues and delicate stimuli, much as we would tune up a car or a musical instrument. By viewing ourselves as a selective lens that extracts limited data from our environment, we can regard the total environment as a vast repository of additional information, the current state of which comprises what we call the present.