You are fundamentally ignorant about the elementary notions of the brain, and basic neuronal properties. First, here is a picture of a neuron, please learn it as I will be referring to it’s components in this post. The neuron is the most basic functional unit of the nervous system (which includes your brain/spinal cord and all your sensory/motor systems). It receives signals through it’s dendrites and sends them through it’s terminal buttons. Not all neurons look like this (my personal favourite are Purkinje cells), but all/most have these basic properties.
Now, with these things in mind, let’s start…
“speed of conduction of neurons” != “quick thinking”
What Neuroscientists call “conduction velocity,” is a basic property of a neuron’s axon or nerve bundle (a group of axons). Quite simply, it is a measurement of the propagation speed (by distance/time) of an action potential down the axon (An action potential is the chemical/electrical signal that neurons give off when they are excited). Different axon types have different conduction velocities (CV). Think of the axon as a leaky hose (not a perfect comparison, but for all intensive purposes it is very apt); CV is affected by two means: passive and active current flow (usually of Sodium) into the axon (see third picture in my “Neuron link”).
The ways that axons differ in CV, is to either increase of the diameter of the axon (any physic majors out there who remembers “Bernoulli’s principle” will know that this effectively decreases internal resistance to current flow), or to prevent current leakage through the axonal wall by increasing the insulation of the axon by the myelin sheath. Both of these factors don’t different from person to person (unless it’s due to a neuropathological disease like Multiple sclerosis) but from neuron type to neuron type.
“quick thinking” is not a scientifically measurable nor defined property, thus cannot even be studied. It exists only due to our limited understanding of brain function and intelligence.
Learning and memory are theoretical concepts (but much more useful then “quick thinking”) used to explain that experience influences behaviour; they are not directly observable entities. Most Neuroscientists (including me) believe that there is a physical basis in the brain for the function of these concepts. Which leads to studies of synaptic plasticity (Long-term Potentiation/Depresstion) of things like the gill withdrawal reflex of Aplysia (a sea slug with a simple nervous system). However, this all has nothing to do with the “ability to grow neural maps” nor do Neuroscientists have any strong idea to how Learning/memory work in animal/humans other then “it has something to do with the Hippocampus.”
I’ll try not to “shoot at the colleagues down the hall,” but… Psychologists need not know the underlying functions/structure of Learning/memory to study it, as they study **behaviour **and **only **behaviour. The Psychologist approach to this (and other) phenomena is to study/observe:
Step 1. Experience
Step 2. ??? (some unknown internal/biological? things happen)
Step 3. Behaviour
Psychologists can infer or assume whatever they want about step 2, but they can’t study nor observe it. When a psychologist makes some genetic/biological claims about some psychological concept they imposing their field onto others and are naturally stepping outside of what they normally work with; this can lead to outstandingly brilliant realizations or complete crap.
When I see such a stupid article by an Evolutionary Psychologist, I know what I’m looking at.
Then again the NFL is dominated by black people also.