VI. Life’s Cerebral Cognizance Becomes More Complex, Smarter, Informed, Proactive, Self-Aware

B. A Neural Encephalization from Minimal Stirrings to an Earthuman Cognizance

Premack, David. Human and Animal Cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104/13861, 2007. The University of Pennsylvania primatologist argues that although an evolutionary continuity exists with our chimpanzee ancestors, human brains possess a greatly enhanced inter-connectivity. As a result, eight domains are cited that set us quite apart: teaching, short-term memory, causal reasoning, planning, deception, transitive inference, theory of mind, and language.

Puschel, Thomas, et al. Hominin brain size increase has emerged from within-species encephalization. PNAS. 121/49, 2024. Much debate has gone on since the 1980s when Harry Jerison (search) first used the long title term to describe a broad evolutionary trend toward bigger, smarter brains. Four decades later, Oxford University, University of Reading and University of Durham neuroscientists including Robert Barton (search) may at last achieve a cogent unity of prior convergent (altogether) and/or mosaic (unit modules) versions. Into the 2020s, they can quantitatively affirm a main emergent Metazoan florescence of cerebral capacity, relative intelligence and cognitive acumen. See also Co-evolutionary dynamics of mammalian brain and body size by Chris Venditti, et al (this group) in Nature Ecology & Evolution (8/8, 2024).

The fact that rapid brain size increase was a key aspect of human evolution has prompted many suggestions as to the underlying evolutionary patterns and processes. No study to date has separated the contributions of change through time within vs. between hominin species while also viewing effects of body size. Using a phylogenetic approach, we show that relative brain size increase across ~7 My of hominin evolution arose from individual species with an increase in relative brain size. In addition, our analysis reveals that the within-species trend escalated in more recent lineages, implying an overall pattern of accelerating brain size increase through time. (Excerpt)

Our study advances the comprehension of human brain evolution by a unique approach that can notice changes in brain size throughout the complete fossil record of hominins. By disentangling the dynamics of brain size change that occur within species from those across species, we find that brain size grew mainly within the lineages comprising a single species. This nuanced understanding deepens our insight into the evolutionary trajectory of human cognition and behavior, which is crucial for unraveling the complexities of our species’ unique traits. (Significance)

One of the most evident evolutionary changes during human evolution associated with our unique cognitive and behavioral traits has been an increase in brain size. Such an “encephalization” has long been debated, and several studies have compared hominin cranial capacities across species to propose adaptive mechanisms among hominins. Some have argued for gradual growth over time, while others find rapid increases followed by stasis. These various views arose in part from conflating distinct phenomena; namely, the role of speciation events on trait diversification, and the importance of gradual vs. pulsed evolution. (1)

Overall, our results illume the multilevel aspects of human brain expansion, as well as a need for future studies to incorporate this hierarchical complexity. Here we offer a quantitative framework to study within- and between-species trait evolution, so to open an avenue of research testing about which factors underly intra- and interspecific brain expansion during hominin evolution. A logical extension is to include predictor variables, such as environmental factors to further test hypotheses about the potential effect of climate on encephalization. (5)

Reader, Simon and Kevin Laland. Social Intelligence, Innovation and Enhanced Brain Size in Primates. Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 99/4436, 2002. An extensive literature search on social learning, invention, and tool use reveals a close correlation between brain size and cognitive capacity.

Redies, Christoph and Luis Puelles. Modularity in Vertebrate Brain Development and Evolution. BioEssays. 23/12, 2001. Semi-autonomous, diverse modules are at work in both the embryonic and functional phases of cerebral formation. Here is another example of the constant modularity throughout the biological kingdom.

It is thought that modularity plays an important role in the evolutionary divergence of species, because modularity allows for adaptive modification of form and function of individual body parts while, at the same time, keeping the general developmental basic plan (Bauplan) of the organism the same. (1100)

Reid, Chris, et al. Information Integration and Multiattribute Decision Making in Non-neuronal Organisms. Animal Behavior. Vol. 100, 2015. As lately possible, Rutgers University and University of Sydney biologists advance the finding that even this most rudimentary phase of animal life and evolution is distinguished by the same individual and colonial behaviors as every other stage and kingdom. Circa 2015, a grand conclusion due to humankind altogether may accrue. Earthly biological and cognitive development does proceeds as a radiation and elaboration of a singular body, brain and societal Bauplan, which quite infers an embryonic gestation. See also Collective Sensing and Collective Responses in Quorum-Sensing Bacteria by Roman Popat in Journal of the Royal Society Interface (Vol.12/Iss.103, 2015) for a similar statement.

Decision making is a necessary process for most organisms, even for the majority of known life forms: those without a brain or neurons. The goal of this review is to highlight research dedicated to understanding complex decision making in non-neuronal organisms, and to suggest avenues for furthering this work. We review research demonstrating key aspects of complex decision making, in particular information integration and multiattribute decision making, in non-neuronal organisms when (1) utilizing adaptive search strategies when foraging, (2) choosing between resources and environmental conditions that have several contradictory attributes and necessitate a trade-off, and (3) incorporating social cues and environmental factors when living in a group or colony. We discuss potential similarities between decision making in non-neuronal organisms and other systems, such as insect colonies and the mammalian brain, and we suggest future avenues of research that use appropriate experimental design and that take advantage of emerging imaging technologies.

Retaux, Sylvie, et al. Perspectives in Evo-Devo of the Vertebrate Brain. J. Todd Streelman, ed. Advances in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Institut Alfred Fessard, CNRS, France, neuroscientists contribute to the retrospective discovery that life’s cerebral evolution is a singular embryonic elaboration from a basic neural anatomy in place from the outset. This is strongly stated, bold added, in the opening paragraph next. From its latest global cerebration, how curious that this prodigious progeny can proceed to reconstruct from whence she and he came. Who are me and We and US?

During the last century, neuroanatomists have compared adult brains, their sizes, their forms, their structures, their neuronal compositions, and their hodology. From the Golgi impregnations of Ramon y Cajal to the introduction of modern techniques of immunocytochemistry or molecular histology, the science of comparative neuroanatomy has accumulated evidence that the brains of vertebrates constitute an infinite collection of variations on a common theme. With the advent of the evolutionary developmental approach, the so-called evo-devo, in the 1980–1990, scientists started to search for the embryonic genetic mechanisms at the origin of both the unity and the variations described between brains. It was the time to compare between embryonic brains the expression patterns of dozens of patterning and regionalization genes, and to define models or frameworks in order to interpret these patterns in diverse species. The global picture that came out of these studies was that the brains of vertebrates are built along an amazingly identical plan during embryogenesis, therefore emphasizing the unity among them. This aspect has been reviewed elsewhere and will not be dealt with here in detail. Rather, we will mainly discuss the developmental mechanisms which, within a common Bauplan, allow for variations in brain anatomy. (151)

The vertebrate forebrain has undergone an extraordinary diversification in the course of evolution. For instance, could anyone see that the mammalian cerebral cortex, with its well-known organization into 6 layers, and the so-called everted pallium of teleost fishes, are homologous brain regions? Using an evolutionary developmental approach, we aim to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms which govern the unity (homology) and the differences (diversification) present in the forebrains of various vertebrates. To this end, we study original animal models: the naturally generated cavefish and the phylogenetically important lamprey, in addition to the conventional model, the mouse. (Sylvie Retaux website)

Richardson, Ken. The Eclipse of Heritability and the Foundations of Intelligence. New Ideas in Psychology. Online October, 2012. The emeritus Open University educator cites post-sequence inabilities over the past decade to connect cerebral features with individual genes. Much more seems to be going on both within genomes and via a multitude of epigenetic effects. As his 2011 book The Evolution of Intelligent Systems: How Molecules Became Minds, (search) well explains, life’s vectorial rise of neural cognitive acumen requires and can be better understood by a novel, broadly conceived paradigm of generative nonlinear dynamics.

It is well known that theory in human cognitive ability or ‘intelligence’ is not well developed, especially with regard to sources of trait variation. Roots of theory have been sought in biology, and it is now widely accepted, on the basis of twin studies, and statistical analysis of variance, that at least half of the normal trait variation can be attributed to genetic variation, a correlation known as the trait ‘heritability’. Since the 1990s, methods in molecular biology have been adopted to go ‘beyond’ this mere statistical attribution to the identification of individual genes responsible for trait variation. More than a decade of intense effort, however, has failed to produce unambiguous, replicable findings; explanations for the ‘missing heritability’ are now being demanded; and calls for new perspectives on the roles of genes and environments in development and trait variation are being demanded. Here, I propose a dynamic systems perspective indicating how the processes in which heritability becomes missing are the very ones that provide the roots of new intelligence theory. (Abstract)

This logic of development and metabolism, as dynamic, self-organized systems, suggests radical changes in our view of the nature and role of genes, and the nature and origins of phenotypic variation. It is now clear that offspring inherit far more than their genes from parents, rather they start life as whole developmental systems. Genes are not autonomous units that somehow turn on to initiate and direct metabolism and development, as a gene-centered command system. Rather these are centered in the dynamics emerging through the vast networks of signaling and transcription regulation. (4-5)

As Vygotsky argued, this form of intelligence (human) vastly extends and amplifies the cognitive abilities of primate intelligence. The dynamics between brains interact with those within brains – just as the dynamics of physiology interact with those within cells – emerging as hierarchies of nested attractors exhibiting reflective abstraction. The cultural tool we call science is one of the best examples: a theory is a collective model of part of nature emergent from the dialectics of scientific method, taking us beyond specific empirical experience. It is such socio-psychonomics that have driven human history across millennia so that, instead of adapting to the environment, like all other species, humans have adapted the environment to themselves. (6)

Richardson, Ken. The Evolution of Intelligent Systems: How Molecules Became Minds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. The emeritus Open University psychologist provides a well-written revision of cerebral, cognitive and social encephalization from old reduction methods to a nonlinear, self-organizing, dynamical network approach. As chapters chronicle life’s stepwise neural development from sentient cells to human and onto group cognizances, one gets a sense of a nested, recurrent gestation getting smarter by proto-whole degrees and scales from blastosphere to noosphere.

Much of the excitement (from the systems view) has stemmed from a closer look at the nature of experience in the real world, revealing just how much dynamic structure is there to foster the evolution of complex systems. The new field of dynamic systems (DST), sometimes under other guises such as non-linear dynamics, or the dynamical approach, is also showing that, in realistically changeable environments, with which most systems in living things have to cope, we need to focus on structures, not elements, in experience, in order to understand what has evolved. This has brought exciting new outlooks on living systems generally. In this book, I hope to show how they can portray evolution as a series of bridges or cascades, each responding to the dynamics of complexity in the world. (17)

Robson, David. A Brief History of the Brain. New Scientist. September 24, 2011. Whence a 21st century worldwide Brain can now view in retrospect the entire course of its earthly evolution and development. A succinct article that takes us from rudimentary sensory cells to the ramifying course of more complex and aware cerebral faculties.

Ros‑Rocher, Nuria and Thibaut Brunet.. What is it like to be a choanoflagellate? Sensation, processing and behavior in the closest unicellular relatives of animals. Animal Cognition. 26/1767, 2024. In this convergent year, Evolutionary Cell Biology and Evolution of Morphogenesis Unit, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris neuroresearchers contribute to analyses of life’s consistent neural and cognitive embellishment beginning with their deepest rudimentary yet acute stirrings.

All animals evolved from a single lineage of unicellular precursors more than 600 million years ago. Thus, the biological and genetic foundations for animal sensation, cognition and behavior must necessarily have arisen by modifications of pre-existing features in their unicellular ancestors. Here, we reconstruct the perceptive environs inhabited by choanoflagellates, a group of aquatic microeukaryotes. Existing evidence shows that they are capable of chemo, photos and mechano-sensation processes that resemble those in animal sensory cells. We discuss how facultative multicellularity in choanoflagellates might help us understand how evolution displaced the locus of decision-making from a single cell to a collective, and how a new space of behavioral complexity might have become accessible in the process. (Abstract)

Discussion: From microbial behavior to animal cognition Although data remain scarce, it is already clear that choanoflagellates have complex perceptive abilities and behaviors: they display at least eight sensory modalities, and as many behavioral outputs (Fig. 2). Almost inevitably, many more must exist, as suggested by the complex molecular repertoire of putative sensory receptors encoded in the choanoflagellate genomes and transcriptomes.

Rosa-Molinar, Eduardo, et al. Hindbrain Development and Evolution. Brain, Behavior and Evolution. 66/4, 2005. A special issue on the organization of the nervous system as the vertebrate hindbrain evolves into cerebellum, pons, and medulla.

Roser, Matthew and Michael Gazzaniga. Automatic Brains – Interpretive Minds. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 13/2, 2004. An agreement with the popular view that unitary consciousness, our constant personal narrative, is constructed from a complex integration of distinct, local, simpler modular processes.

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