Man's Inhumanity fo the Great Apes

I believe our brains have much in common with the great apes - the main difference being that we have a supercharged version. For this reason I was upset to see the latest report on the numbers of great apes that are illegally killed or taken into captivity each year. I am clearly worried that we are likely to end up with them all going extinct or ending up in permanent captivity.

Rural Relaxation: Red-crested Poachard at College Lake

A couple of days ago the sun was shining and  I decided to bus to College Lake (I normally drive) and walk all the way round - taking photographs as I went. The highlight of the trip was when I was down at water level and through a gap in the water edge vegetation I could see this pair of Red Crested Pochards diving for food.

Chimpanzees Enjoy Brain Puzzles

Recent research carried out at Whipsnade Zoo, only a few miles from where I live, and has been reported by the BBC. The game involved poking red dice along tubes until they fell into a container. The BBC report says:

Researcher Fay Clark, from the society, said they noticed the chimps were "keen to complete the puzzle" for its own sake, regardless of whether or not they received a food reward.
"This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain-games for a feel-good reward," she said.
"For chimps in the wild, this task is a little bit like foraging for insects or honey inside a tree stump or a termite mound, except more challenging because the dice do not stick to the tool."
Researchers created higher "levels" of challenge by connecting many pipes together, and making them opaque so the dice or nuts could only be glimpsed through small holes.

This is yet another example that we think in the same was as out fellow apes - the main difference being that we have bigger brains (which can store very much more information) and we can also far more effectively pass information from one individual to another using language.

The full article, Effect of a Cognitive Challenge Device Containing Food and Non-Food Rewards on Chimpanzee Well-Being, is published in the American Journal of Primatology, and contain useful information and prior references to related work.

How evolution made us the way we are

The talk about the mechanics of evolution I gave yesterday went very well, and I looked at the factors that shaped our body (walking on two legs, the hands, the voice box, and loosing hair) when we moved from the African forests to the savannah. I then discussed why a brain is very expensive - and why animals would not evolve a large brain unless there was a very real advantage. I then discussed how a rudimentary language, a tool-making culture, and a bigger brain could lead to the kind of explosion in apparent human intelligence (as judged by surviving artifacts) that started sometime between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.

If you need to prepare a similar talk, aimed at a lay audience, you may find the slides of the talk (pdf file) helpful. Most should be reasonably self explanatory apart from a few slides at the end which very briefly look at a model of how the brain uses memories to make decisions - which relates to some of my own research. A more detailed paper will appear on this blog shortly. 

How the Human Brain works – concept cells, memodes and CODIL

BRAIN 

STORMS 

Number

13

I am really Excited.

I can't wait to tell you about it. 

See Later Follow Up Discussion Papers 

From the Neuron to Human Intelligence: Part 1: The “Ideal Brain” Model Part 2: Evolution and Learning (to appear shortly)

I am currently preparing a talk How Evolution has made us the way we are – and I had a problem. You can't really assess how evolution has affected the development of the human mind unless you have a clear model of how the brain processes and stores information. I have already, in earlier brain storms on this blog pointed to the black hole in brain research where very significant amounts of work is being done round the edge of the problem but where there is no good model of how electrical pulses in the brain are translated into human language or behaviour. I have also discussed at length how work on a highly unconventional language called CODIL (COntext Dependent Information Language) may throw some light on the issue and recently introduced the term memode (memory node - see The Evolution of Intelligence - From Neural Net to Natural Langauge) to try and demonstrate a possible mechanism. However there was still a major gap in the model if it was to serve as an adequate model for understanding how the evolutionary pressures worked.

So What has Happened???

The trigger to filling the gap came from the article “Brain Cells for Grandmother” in this month's Scientific American, by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, Itzhak Fried and Christof Koch. (see also Concept Cells: the building blocks of declarative memory functions by Rodrigo Quain Quiroga). This research involved monitoring the activity of single neurons in the medial temporal lobe of epileptic patients undergoing assessment prior to surgery. It was observed that a single cell might respond to different pictures of a single individual, while remaining inactive when pictures of other people were shown. In one case a neuron was found which responded to three different pictures of Luke Skywalker, his name (either in writing or spoken) and interestingly to a picture of Yoda, another character in the film Star Wars.

One of the problems I was facing in earlier brain storms was the relationship between the information in the working memory (called the Facts in CODIL) and the main memory which contained the items of information and the links between them. On reading "Brain Cells for Grandmother" the relationship became clear. Information is stored in the links, and the main memory and the working memory are one and the same – the difference is that the working memory is defined by the links which are currently active. I can now tie my model into the neural network in the brain and the change of viewpoint provides throws light on the following aspects of the working and evolution of the human mind..

• The “virtual” information represented when the top neuron in a memode is active is simply the sum of all the subsidiary memodes (recursively) which are linked to the memode. Thus each concept is at the top of a tree of subsidiary concepts. There is no one location where information about a concept is stored.
• The senses trigger bottom up activity in the memodes, the objects  we “see,” “hear,” or “smell” being the highest level memodes activated.
• The CODIL Decision Making algorithm maps onto a process in which active memodes can trigger top-down activity in related but initially non-active memodes. (Basically the brain can decide that if “A” and “B” are active “C” should be active.)
• Consciousness (the information we are actively aware of – and equivalent to the Facts in CODIL) is the sum of the information represented at the time by the top active memodes.
• Learning involves the linking of the top active memodes to generate a new higher level memode. (In fact it looks as if deciding what not to learn and what to forget becomes the critical factor than learning in building memories.)
• If we assume that some decisions are made sequentially - with a series of memodes triggered in a predefined order – the model could support at least a simple spoken (i.e. sequential) language. The experience with CODIL being able to handle significant non-trivial information processing tasks is relevant here. This points to an evolutionary tipping point leading to the explosive growth of both language and other special skills.

For more details read on ....

Do Greater Horseshoe Bats (and their relatives) Menstruate?

Greater Horseshoe bat in Devon Cave

In connection with my interests in human evolution I discovered – thanks to the blog “The Evolving Placenta,” that humans are one of the few mammals which menstruate – and that some bats do. I will, of course, be discussing the evolutionary advantages of menstruation in humans in the talk I am preparing – but I am intrigued by the mention of bats.

The reason for my interest was that in the late 50's I helped with the studies of the Greater Horseshoe Bats carried out in the Buckfastleigh area of Devon by John and Win Hooper. The young are born in communal nurseries between May and July, the earlier dates in mild springs but bats were occasionally observed mating throughout the colder months of the year when they were hibernating in caves – suggesting embryos of different ages might be born at about the same time. Because the bats only have one young a year, at a time when there will be plenty of food, it is important that they don't miss a year's breeding. The prolonged mating season is of interest and I am wondering if evolutionary pressures have caused them to menstruate for the same reason as is suggested for humans. If the womb is prepared at the time of ovulation the fertilized egg finds a ready prepared “bed” where it can get nourishment. It therefore starts growing more rapidly – and if it is defective it can be discarded – and because if the long mating season there is time to prepare another egg (and its ready made bed) in time to mate again. This approach could allow several ovulation, fertilization and mensuration cycles to take place during the lengthy mating season, until there is an acceptable embryo in the womb, in time for the young to be born when the food supply is good.

So why do humans, many other primates, and bats menstrurate? Could it be that if you only have one embryo at a time it is very important to avoid loosing an opportunity to breed. Many other mammals can "solve" the problem of missed pregnancy opportunities by having multiple embryos. 

I wonder if anyone interested in the sexual life of bats can throw any light on whether our U.K. species menstruate?. Due to their conservation status I am sure I would not be welcome to visit the Devon bat haunts to examine females bats to see if they were menstruating!!!

Additional References:

Devon Biodiversity Action Plan - Greater horseshoe bat

The Greater Horseshoe Bats of Buckfastleigh

Origins of Greater Horseshoe Bat uncovered

Greater Horseshoe Bats in South Devon – New Planning Guidancce

Mentioning Menstruation in Bats

Wild Fulvous Fruit Bats (Rousettus leschenaulti) Exhibit Human-Like Menstrual Cycle

Spontaneous decidual reactions and menstruation in the black mastiff bat, Molossus ater.

Menstruation in short-tailed fruit bats (Carollia spp.)

How evolution has made us what we are

I have agreed to talk to our local U3A Science & Technology group in February on the mechanics of evolution with a special emphasis on the mechanisms that drive the changes,  and later in the year I may follow up with a talk on human evolution in terms of the fossils, etc, that have been found in recent years.

The following is the "sound byte" summary for the talk together with a list of topics to be considered in drafting the presentation:

How evolution has made us what we are

I examine how recent scientific advances show the ways evolution has shaped the human body and mind – and the important role played by climate change in Africa three million years ago.

Key Topics

1. The basic elements of Evolution: DNA – Sex – and the mechanisms of gradual change – homology - why our body plan is not that different to the early mammals. (10 minutes)
2. How tree life shaped the primates – longer childhoods and animal cultures (5 minutes)
3. Surviving climate change and the African Rain Forests – Living in new environments and the effects on the human body – walking upright – loosing hair – the use of tools - menopause (15 minutes)
4. An important tipping point – culture and the development of language – we have bigger brains but can we use them more effectively than some other animals? What causes the so-called “God Slot” (20 minutes)
5. Other Homo species (Neanderthal, Densiovan) and the move out of Africa. The Coming of Civilization – is evolution still happening - are there significant differences between different races and/or the sexes? (10 minutes)

(If you have been following this blog you will know that I am particularly interested in the evolution of intelligence, and how my own research throws some light on possible pathways. While the above talk will mention how the coming of language could lead to a period where, in evolutionary terms, it is more advantageous for human brains to concentrate on rote learning while encouraging imaginative learning (the ability to think for oneself) to become less important. Once the talk is out of the way I will be posting a more detailed argument to show that this is the probable cause of the "God Spot." )

Rural Relaxation: Swans, Ducks and Gulls at College Lake

The snow has gone - and most of the ice covering the marsh at College Lake has melted. These swans has gathered at the edge of the ice sheet to feed, accompanied by a number of pochards, a few tufted ducks, and a host of black-headed gulls.

And I am back online - at least as far as this blog is concerned. I have been continuing my country walks, taking more photographs than I have time to sort out - and I have been working harder than ever on the local history & genealogy side - with more that 50 posts on www.hertfordshire-genealogy.blogspot.com in January. 

In fact I have been moved to consider posting here on several occasions - about various ways in which we are trapped by the democratic system we have. This ends up electing people whose actions show they are more interested in building a career that depends on short-term sound-byte packaged policies that look good on TV or from the platform of the conference hall. We end up with a government in which rank amateurs (as far as having practical experience how to manage long term changes involving large numbers of people) end up proposing idealistically attractive changes without adequate proper assessment of the alternatives. There is an almost total inability to give proper priority to long term problems such as global warming, where doing nothing till it becomes a crisis is not a vilid solution. If, like me, you are interested in evolution - and how life on this planet evolved - you are automatically worried about what happens next - in the long term as well as the short term - and the future seems gloomy. However I have decided I should not allow depression about the future stop me from speaking out honestly about the present. So expect to hear from me more often in future.