I am invested in this model: “Another way of looking at all this is that the lower brain structures “drags” the cortex along as is does what a lizard brain might do and the cortex responds by projecting back learned shaping influences to improve this behavior.”
A baby has instinctual behavior to look at faces and pair that with comfort and nursing.[1] (priming things like visual search and social behavior)
I could go on at length but I will just jump right to the summation: without these training and activation functions, the cortex would never learn anything useful nor be driven to do anything by attention/orienting and instinctual drives coupled into the forebrain.
The cortex may make a mammal much smarter than a lizard but the lizard behavior is still the framework that drives it all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development
Ed_Pell, I think this is what you are looking for:
Wired for behaviors: from development to function of innate limbic system circuitry - Katie Sokolowski and Joshua G. Corbin
(Sorry - link fixed!)