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Wow! I like the thoughts and questions raised in this post. The issues you raised about "feral children" is extremely interesting to me, but on a somewhat different branch. We are talking about the neocortex and humans vs. mammals/other animals, but what about between humans. Reared in different cultures and with vastly different traditions, are the brains of humans, particularly their neocortexes, different? Communication between humans and animals and communication between humans from very different worlds is not so dissimilar. It seems to me that "I-function" patterns are highly advanced in humans, but that even two different advanced patterns are difficult to fuse together.

I agree with many comments above that the neocortex contains a special component in humans expressed in language. Communication for humans, although I mentioned above that between humans it is not always easy, all humans use some sort of language to communicate to each other. I also think that other animals have ways of communicating and it is often through sophisticated strategies, but the similarity between human languages and body language is intriguing and worth noting.

Sophie's question about Schizophrenia makes me wonder if my question before about schizophrenia being a mistake, should instead be are schizophrenic brains more advanced, but somehow unable to cope with "normal" brain communication? Can we survive if there are competing "I-functions" within the same "I"?