The Myth of Neurotypical Brains, Behaviours and Beliefs: Every Human Brain is Unique, Yet they Share a Common Ancestry

This review examines respected historical perspectives illuminating different layers of human existence: evolution, biology, physics, and spirituality. Human brains exist across a spectrum of diversity, and this variation shapes our lives. It challenges long-held assumptions about what is normal and responsible behaviour, including comparisons between human and artificial minds. The review was inspired by this author's multigenerational family experiences involving neurological, psychiatric, and behavioural differences. Personal experience of significant changes in both her body and brain followed severe viral illnesses. Anecdotally, pathogens accompanied Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle after first encounters with Galapagos’ animal species, while Florence Nightingale spent decades confined to bed following her exposure to diseases during the Crimean War. Brains are dynamic systems that change throughout life while interacting with illness, genetics, environment, experience and aging. Perspectives range from human evolution and primate behaviour to neuroscience, exceptional cognition, free will, and emerging artificial societies. The review explores whether diversity itself may be a defining characteristic of complex adaptive systems. It considers adaptation during an era of converging global challenges that we learn about at the speed of light: climate change; epidemics and pandemics; drone or biological warfare; increased mass migrations; declining birth rates; artificial intelligence (AI) and potentially, alien life. Extreme adversity may influence vulnerability, resilience, and patterns of brain adaptation. As AI becomes an increasingly influential cognitive environment (smart phones are ubiquitous), it may expand human brain diversity by enabling new forms of intelligence, or it may encourage convergence towards shared patterns of artificial cognition.