Question

What advantages might there be for infants to be born with more nerve cells (neurons) than they actually need or use?  

Think of language, for example. When a human infant is born, he/she has to ability to learn to speak any language that humans speak however, as the infant grows and is exposed to one predominant language in his/her home, this becomes the language that the child learns to speak. The child sounds like other native speakers of his/her language. Later, if the person decides to take a foreign language in high school, he/she will most likely sound like a foreign speaker when speaking the newly learned language or for some students, learning a foreign language is a rather difficult task.

In later life, if a person has a cerebral vascular accident (CVA) or what people in the community call "a stroke", and this person speaks more than one language, after the CVA, she/he will more likely be able to speak basically the first language learned. The second, third, etc. languages the person learned, will typically be very difficult for this person.

Example: Elisita was born into a Spanish speaking family in Mexico . Her parents spoke only Spanish in the home, as did Elisita's siblings and other relatives. Very few of Elisita's neighbors spoke English therefore Elisita was never exposed to the sound of English as a baby/toddler. When Elisita was two years of age, her family migrated to Chicago, Illinois. At age five, Elisita was enrolled in a public school where she was exposed to the English language at least six hours per day. She learned to speak English quite well. When Elisita was age sixty-nine, due to uncontrolled high blood pressure, she suffered a cerebral vascular accident. With some speech therapy she was able to recover a great deal of her Spanish language skills, but her ability to speak English was impaired.  

Answer 1

Felt great to answer. Good luck!