The hierarchical organization of the central nervous system: Implications for learning processes and critical periods in early development

As all behavioral scientists know, the child is father of the man, and mounds of data have been collected on the behavioral and neurological changes which occur as the infant sucking his fist becomes the adult who programs computers and peers through microscopes. This paper attempts to correlate behavioral data on the development of learning processes with neurological data on the maturation of the central nervous system, and proposes a model to relate these phenomena to each other.