Derived from Darwin’s theory of natural selection and also referred to as ‘Neural Darwinism’, it is process-oriented approach to brain functioning. In a nutshell, TNGS posits non-instructive sensorimotor systems that can adapt to their environment. Based on a multi-agent architecture rather than a connectionist network, the resulting autonomous agent imposes perceptual categorisation on the environment, while learning arises from re-entrant links between agents of the control device. According to TNGS, the brain operates on the basis of two processes: a developmental process involving Darwinian competition between populations of neurons only constrained in part by the genes, and a learning process accomplished by a faster, less permanent, selectional process that temporarily strengthens or weakens neuronal connections. Pruning of redundant connections is accomplished by re-entrant links between maps composed of neuronal groups organised by the first selectional process. The theory emphasises the epigenetic nature of the entire developmental process that leads to enormous diversity at the microscopic level, and treats degenerative neuronal nets as the basis for selective processes occurring postnatally that result from experience. Due to both developmental and experiential selection as well as self-organizing processes at many levels of neuronal organisation, behavior emerges in ways that cannot be predicted by environmental instructionism or by knowledge of brain evolution. TNGS is not entirely new as there have been previous attempts to devise theories of development based on Darwinian mechanisms in the brain (e.g., by means of genetic algorithms).
See Baldwin effect, Connectionism, Darwinism, Emergence, Epigenetics, Natural selection, Permissive interaction, Theory of natural selection