Dr. David Eagleman

information, the optic nerve, and he plugged it into the auditory cortex.

And then what would have been the auditory cortex became visually responsive, and it started caring about vision.

So what does that mean?

It means the cortex is a one-trick pony, and we got so much more of it, including the prefrontal cortex.

So that has two major effects.

One is that there's a lot more room with our species in between input and output.

So with a squirrel or a cat or even a macaque monkey, you know, you throw some food in front of it, that sensory cortex is right next to the motor cortex.

It's going to eat the thing.

But we've got all this computational real estate in between in and out.

So we can say, well, I'm on a diet.

I'm trying whatever.

I'll eat it later.

We've got all these other options that we can take.

That's one thing.

And then the other thing is exactly what you pointed to, which is the prefrontal cortex, which allows us to simulate what ifs.

Allows us to think about possible futures, simulate things in a way that we don't have to risk our lives doing it.

We can simulate it and say, oh, that would be a bad idea.

Oh, that'd be a pretty good idea.

And then we can take the action.

That is exactly right.