  In order to keep trace of information and grow up, the infant brain has to
resolve the problem about where old information is located and how to index new
ones. We propose that the immature prefrontal cortex (PFC) use its primary
functionality of detecting hierarchical patterns in temporal signals as a
second purpose to organize the spatial ordering of the cortical networks in the
developing brain itself. Our hypothesis is that the PFC detects the
hierarchical structure in temporal sequences in the form of ordinal patterns
and use them to index information hierarchically in different parts of the
brain. Henceforth, we propose that this mechanism for detecting patterns
participates in the ordinal organization development of the brain itself; i.e.,
the bootstrapping of the connectome. By doing so, it gives the tools to the
language-ready brain for manipulating abstract knowledge and planning
temporally ordered information; i.e., the emergence of symbolic thinking and
language. We will review neural models that can support such mechanisms and
propose new ones. We will confront then our ideas with evidence from
developmental, behavioral and brain results and make some hypotheses, for
instance, on the construction of the mirror neuron system, on embodied
cognition, and on the capacity of learning-to-learn.
