except that small thing about inherent learning.... I know it is difficult to differentiate between big structures  which are strongly protein related (genes if you will) and then the connectivity which is basically celular communciation (no genes involved)..

but if you do separate both (and I agree at first order they can be separated as far as we know)..then you have to separate it completely... neuronal connections- both stablishing hte conenctions and sending signals through it- are neurons talking to each other... so inherent learning will be basically externally generated input where biochemichals act as carriers of external information... in that approxiamtion hormones and GABA and AMPA and NMDA and the chemotaxis biochemicals are there just to trasnmit enviromental signals so that neurons can talk to each other and decide how to connect or how strongly or in which clusters or..., not to generate the general brain structure, not to specify the connectivity.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

I try to find illuminating connections between things. However it all keeps coming back to how the brain works.

that's because it's really hard to have higher cognitive functions with no brain.  (Interestingly, there have been babies born with only one hemisphere.  They normally die round about 2 years old.)  But it is possible to draw lines, and thank heavens, otherwise nobody would get anything done.  It's when those arbitrary lines, draw for convenience, become fixed borders problems arise.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre