Homo-rewardism

MT:

Maybe what makes us special is an extra "reward circuit" in our brains. The characteristic addictiveness of speed and other stimulants gets pinned on dopamine and its action in the so-called "pleasure" or "reward" center of the brain. Maybe what distinguished early homo was that a banana or any other stimulus outside the skull was not all our ancestral brains could look to for reinforcing (ala Pavlov) a behavior or way of cogitating. What if a mutation sent some nerve astray during development in utero or postnatally and created a new input into the reward center? It was bound to happen, in fact, and what if on a particular occasion the stray originated from an area with great acoustics for what was going on overall in the brain. What if this line got livelier when several circuits resonated and such resonance signaled mental concepts cohering? That homo would get an internal reward--a splash of dopamine--every time she put two and two together. That is, she'd get the splash even if her immediate surroundings offered her no application for her insight. In particular, notice that pairing "two and two" would reward her, while not "two and three," say, because combination like that don't harmonize. To an individual of such an evolutionary lineage, suddenly logical coherence is its own reward...

...Ever wondered why so many species can learn to act so smartly after you toss them a few biscuits or bananas or fish, but won't write so much as a novella if left to themselves?