“... there is definitely something special about the bond we have with dogs. Their ability to read our communicative gestures makes them seem “in tune” with us. And their attentiveness to our every move can’t help but make us feel special. There is one study that shows that dogs would prefer to spend time with humans than their own species, which is unusual for an animal. Every dog owner is familiar with that rise in spirits as a thumping tail greets you at the door, and from the enthusiasm dogs have for us, it’s hard to believe the feeling isn’t mutual.”
—Dog behavioral scientist Brian Hare
I think “dog behavioral scientist” is probably in the running for coolest job of all time. Humans and dogs have evolved hand in hand, with our ancestors selecting (on purpose and accidentally) the particular traits in these descendants of wolves that helped our tribes and villages hunt, stay safe, and be happy. No other species is so deeply in tune with what we want.
Brian Hare has also developed an online program called Dognition. For a small fee, you get a set of games to test your dog’s particular cognitive talents, helping to advance dog science while getting to know your best friend’s mind that much better.
Check out the full interview with Brian Hare: The Brilliance of the Dog Mind at Scientific American
If you really want to dig into the mind of your drooly companion, Brian and his co-researcher wroteL The Genius of Dogs.
Brain frontal lobes not sole centre of human intelligence
Human intelligence cannot be explained by the size of the brain’s frontal lobes, say researchers.
Research into the comparative size of the frontal lobes in humans and other species has determined that they are not - as previously thought - disproportionately enlarged relative to other areas of the brain, according to the most accurate and conclusive study of this area of the brain.
It concludes that the size of our frontal lobes cannot solely account for humans’ superior cognitive abilities.
The study by Durham and Reading universities suggests that supposedly more ‘primitive’ areas, such as the cerebellum, were equally important in the expansion of the human brain. These areas may therefore play unexpectedly important roles in human cognition and its disorders, such as autism and dyslexia, say the researchers.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today.
The frontal lobes are an area in the brain of mammals located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere, and are thought to be critical for advanced intelligence.
Lead author Professor Robert Barton from the Department of Anthropology at Durham University, said: “Probably the most widespread assumption about how the human brain evolved is that size increase was concentrated in the frontal lobes.
“It has been thought that frontal lobe expansion was particularly crucial to the development of modern human behaviour, thought and language, and that it is our bulging frontal lobes that truly make us human. We show that this is untrue: human frontal lobes are exactly the size expected for a non-human brain scaled up to human size.
“This means that areas traditionally considered to be more primitive were just as important during our evolution. These other areas should now get more attention. In fact there is already some evidence that damage to the cerebellum, for example, is a factor in disorders such as autism and dyslexia.”
The scientists argue that many of our high-level abilities are carried out by more extensive brain networks linking many different areas of the brain. They suggest it may be the structure of these extended networks more than the size of any isolated brain region that is critical for cognitive functioning.
Previously, various studies have been conducted to try and establish whether humans’ frontal lobes are disproportionately enlarged compared to their size in other primates such as apes and monkeys. They have resulted in a confused picture with use of different methods and measurements leading to inconsistent findings.
The Durham and Reading researchers, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, analysed data sets from previous animal and human studies using phylogenetic, or ‘evolutionary family tree’, methods, and found consistent results across all their data. They used a new method to look at the speed with which evolutionary change occurred, concluding that the frontal lobes did not evolve especially fast along the human lineage after it split from the chimpanzee lineage.
This is finally canon: Animals conscious say leading neuroscientists
mindhacks.comvia the always wonderful MindHacks:
A group of leading neuroscientists has used a conference at Cambridge University to make an official declaration recognising consciousness in animals.
The declaration was made at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference and signed by some of the leading lights in consciousness research, including Christof Koch and David Edelman.
The main part of the declaration reads:
We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non- human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”
While it feels like a “well, duh” moment, it does remove the eons-old notion that “consciousness” comes from the higher cortex. And it does/could have implications on our understanding of the universality of memory, emotion, and self-awareness.
“The next time we want to run the race toward closure, to be the first to tweet or post or report, to follow the first thing we hear because it seems so believable, we’d do well to consider the lessons of Boston….The need for cognitive closure is a powerful force. But a need is neither a mandate nor an excuse.”
—Maria Konnikova explains why human beings quickly seek closure in a crisis, and what we can learn from the misinformation that plagued professional news outlets during the Boston bombings
Trends in Cognitive Sciences | Uncovering the genetic underpinnings of cognition
cell.comNo one today can ignore the genetic approach to cognition and behavior, given the huge achievements of the Human Genome Project. The initial impact of studies of individual differences in genetic polymorphisms, such as the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) gene, and their relationship to such core cognitive concepts as working memory (in this case via its modulation by prefrontal dopamine [1]) has been immense, catching the imagination of many cognitive neuroscientists. Here is a way, for example, to evaluate the effect of individual differences in neurotransmitter function without the need to administer drugs. Alternatively, possible heterogeneity in behavioral performance or patterns of neural network activation revealed through functional neuroimaging, may be resolved by taking into account genetic factors.
Taken together, the contributions in this special issue address the genetic underpinnings of key aspects of cognition, such as memory, intelligence, reward processing, as well as emotion and personality, in the context of both healthy populations and in key disorders, such as schizophrenia, autism, and addiction. Collectively, the articles discuss evidence from a variety of perspectives and different approaches, including twin, linkage, candidate gene, genome-wide association, imaging genetics, gene×environment interaction, and gene expression studies, providing insight into the strengths and challenges for each approach.
