Epigenetics and the Development of Cognitive Functions: Literacy as a Case-study

In contemporary cognitive neurosciences contingency referes to the importance of individual experience – sociocultural environment and interpersonal relationships – in the continuous molding of our bodies, brains and individual minds. The so-called ‘social and cultural neurosciences’ (‘interpersonal neurobiology’ in Siegel’s words) are clearly aimed to study the essential connection between cognition, brain, body and environment (Siegel 2014; Aglioti e Berlucchi 2013). Looking at the brain as an intrinsically dynamic and plastic organ, with an ‘open architecture’ sculpted over the time by individual’s history and experience, the neurobiological basis of our behavior, our neuronal pathways, today are viewed in terms of ‘epigenetic lanscapes’ (Bateson 2011). And the development of many cognitive functions and emotional capacities – from learning and memory to individual resilience and coping with stress – is deeply grounded in epigenetic processes. From within this theoretical framework, literacy will be adopted as a case-study, being a specie-specific cognitive function with an essential role in human biological and cultural evolution (Changeux 2012). And in the epigenetic and developmental neuronal pathways and circuits in the brain we’ll find the neurobiological foundations of our ability to write and to read the linguistic code. Assuming ‘Neural Darwinism’ as a paradigm, one of the fundamental euristic tools of the proposed analysis will be the concept of ‘neural recycling’ (Dehaene 2007) in the context of the contemporary ‘neuroplasticy revolution’ (Doidge 2015).