http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150616215956.htm

We don’t yet formally believe in distributed cognition. ‘Some insect studies support this suggestion’.

The reality is staggeringly beyond that. We are and emerge from biocognitive hypersystems. That is what nature ‘is’. And what those ‘are’? Is more than the sum of what science or religion has ever been able to dream.

“The society you live in can shape the complexity of your brain–and it does so differently for social insects than for humans and other vertebrate animals.”

The society you create and invent … can re-shape the complexity of your brain. More rapidly than you can possibly imagine.

The upshot of this research is that brains develop best in small, tightly-knit social groups. And that large groups… could effectively cause them to degrade. Something I noticed in humans when I was a late teen.