VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twindividuality

1. Systems Physiology and Psychology: Somatic and Behavioral Development

Bulf, Hermann, et al. Infants Learn Better from Left to Right. Nature Scientific Reports. 7/2437, 2017. University of Milano-Bicocca and Université Paris Descartes cognitive psychologists quantify an innate propensity of babies to visually scan from left to right, which is attributed to an early favoring of the integral right hemisphere. See also Number-Space Mapping in the Newborn Chick Resembles Humans’ Mental Number Line by Rosa Rugani, et al in Science (347/534, 2015) which reports the same proclivity, re second quote.

These early directional cues might shape the direction of infants’ spatial representation of order depending on the dominant direction of their cultural environment. Alternatively, the emergence of a left-to-right spatial organization of ordered dimensions during the first months of life might be rooted in biologically-determined neural constraints in the human brain. Indeed, the right hemisphere is dominant in visuo-spatial task, and it has recently been proposed that early temporal asymmetries in hemispheric maturation, with a temporal advantage for the right over the left hemisphere, may determine a leftward asymmetrical exploration of visual space that would constrain the structure of infant’s representational space. The possibility of a link between a right hemispheric dominance and a left-to-right representation of ordinal information is also suggested by studies with non-human animals. (Bulf 4)

Humans represent numbers along a mental number line (MNL), where smaller values are located on the left and larger on the right. The origin of the MNL and its connections with cultural experience are unclear: Pre-verbal infants and nonhuman species master a variety of numerical abilities, supporting the existence of evolutionary ancient precursor systems. In our experiments, 3-day-old domestic chicks, once familiarized with a target number (5), spontaneously associated a smaller number (2) with the left space and a larger number (8) with the right space. The same number (8), though, was associated with the left space when the target number was 20. Similarly to humans, chicks associate smaller numbers with the left space and larger numbers with the right space. (Rugani Abstract)

Cairns, Robert. The Making of Development Psychology. Richard Lerner, ed. Handbook of Child Psychology, Volume 1. New York: Wiley, 1998. A century-long history of the field of developmental psychology it grew from individual conjectures to humankind’s global collaborative endeavor.

In June 1994, a Nobel Foundation symposium comprised of noted biologists and psychologists called for an integrated unified framework for the study of development. No single source or single investigator can be credited, since it has become an interdisciplinary, international movement. (92)

Cangelosi, Angelo and Matthew Schlesinger. Developmental Robotics: From Babies to Robots. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015. A Foreword by Linda Smith, cofounder with the late Esther Thelen of dynamical systems theory for infant and child maturation, sets the theme of the work. University of Plymouth, UK, and Southern Illinois University researchers draw upon such features of human learning as self-organization, enaction, multifaceted causes, intrinsic motivation, cognitive bootstrapping, and so on, to achieve similar robotic behaviors. The core concept is the recognition that children teach and guide themselves on a progressive individuation course. An effective robotic entity should be built with open programs capable of similar responses. Another theme is a parallel between self-ontogeny and evolutionary phylogeny. See also Developmental Process Emerges from Extended Brain-Body-Behavior Networks by Lisa Byrge, Olaf Sporns, and Linda Smith in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (18/8, 2014).

Developmental robotics is a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to robotics that is directly inspired by the developmental principles and mechanisms observed in children's cognitive development. It builds on the idea that the robot, using a set of intrinsic developmental principles regulating the real-time interaction of its body, brain, and environment, can autonomously acquire an increasingly complex set of sensorimotor and mental capabilities. This volume, drawing on insights from psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and robotics, offers the first comprehensive overview of a rapidly growing field.

Cantor, Pamela and David Osher, eds.. The Science of Learning and Development. London, Routledge, 2021. The authors, noted below, draw upon complementary personal (internal) and societal (external) dimensions to provide a whole scale relevant setting for these formative years.

This essential text unpacks the study of learning and human development and provides evidence for how science can inform innovation in the design of settings, policies, practice, and research to enhance the life path, opportunity and prosperity of every child. The ideas present a rationale for focusing on the specific pathways and developmental patterns that may lead a specific child, with a specific family, school, and community, to prosper in school and in life.

Pamela Cantor, MD is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and founder of Turnaround for Children, which promotes healthy whole-child development. David Osher, PhD is vice president of the American Institutes for Research where he studies school safety, supportive conditions for social and emotional learning and more.

Cao, Miao, et al. Developmental Connectomics from Infancy through Early Childhood. Trends in Neuroscience. 40/8, 2019. Connectome: a complete set of neural elements (neurons, brain regions, etc.) and their interconnections (synapses, fiber pathways, temporal correlations.) Beijing Normal University and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia cognitive neuroresearchers describe novel computational neuroimaging and neurophysiological methods which are revealing the course followed by cerebral architectures as they mature over the first five years of our lives. See also Mechanisms of Connectome Development by Marcus Kaiser in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (21/9, 2017).

The human brain undergoes rapid growth in both structure and function from infancy through early childhood, which influences cognitive and behavioral development in later life. The new developmental connectomics research field provides new opportunities to study developing brain through the non-invasive mapping of structural and functional connectivity patterns. We investigate connectome formation from 20 postmenstrual weeks to 5 years of age with regard to five fundamental principles of strengthened segregation/integration balance, hierarchical order from primary to higher-order regions, structural and functional maturations, individual variability, and vulnerability to risk factors and developmental disorders. (Abstract excerpt)

Courage, Mary and Mark Howe. From Infant to Child: The Dynamics of Cognitive Change in the Second Year of Life. Psychological Bulletin. 128/2, 2002. A historical and current review of the field whose studies have ranged from the constructivism of Piaget to new nativism and modularity theories. In this transitional second year occurs self-awareness and the profusion of language.

For example, the development of behavior that appears to be discontinuous or disorderly at the performance level but which arises from underlying processes that are themselves continuous and orderly (e.g., an infant’s vocabulary acquisition or first steps) is consistent with the self-organizing properties that typify non-linear dynamic systems. (268)

Crespi, Bernard. Pattern Unifies Autism. Frontiers in Psychiatry. February, 2021. The Simon Fraser University, Canada clinical biopsychologist has previously sketched (search) a mental spectrum from this malady that only views dots without connections (unable to relate to anyone) all the way to schizophrenia whence only patterns exist, often misread or not there. Here is it contended that our relative aware sentience can be equated with varying degrees of “perception, recognition, maintenance, generation, seeking, and processing” of certain images, or a lack thereof.

As another way to appreciate, it occurred that one might apply this range to public proclivities from anarchy to individualism, fair egalitarian, authoritarian and totalitarian conditions. The USA is grievously beset by divides and disunity, unable to connect anything. Russia is now in ruins because its leader is obsessed with and acting upon erroneous, senseless scenarios. In regard, historian Thomas Piketty (search) lately recommends a “Participatory Socialism” so that peoples might converge on a viable. middle-way, reciprocal balance. But we again ask, however might these sane findings ever reach, inform and save a world for children.

Autism is a highly heterogeneous condition, genetically and phenotypically. These diverse causes and influences have impeded its definition, recognition, assessment, and treatment. Current autism criteria involve restricted interests, repetitive behavior (RRBs) and social deficits. I suggest that this suite of autistic traits, and more can be grouped under the single rubric of “pattern,” a term that involves consistent brain and cognitive functions. RRBs result from decreased and imbalanced pattern-related perceptions, and consequent social deficits from aberrant connections and imagery. (excerpt)

Dahmen, David, et al. Second Type of Criticality in the Brain Uncovers Rich Multiple-Neuron Dynamics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116/13051, 2019. Julich Research Center, Germany neuroresearchers at once confirm a cerebral tendency to settle at this optimum state, while teasing out another neural way that brains avail this productive balance.

Parallel recordings of motor cortex show weak pairwise correlations on average but a wide dispersion across cells. This observation runs counter to the prevailing notion that optimal information processing requires networks to operate at a critical point, entailing strong correlations. We here reconcile this apparent contradiction by showing that the observed structure of correlations is consistent with network models that operate close to a critical point of a different nature than previously considered: dynamics that is dominated by inhibition yet nearly unstable due to heterogeneous connectivity. Our findings provide a different perspective on criticality in neural systems: network topology and heterogeneity endow the brain with two complementary substrates for critical dynamics of largely different complexities. (Significance)

Dautriche, Isabelle & Emmanuel Chemla.. Evidence for compositional abilities in one-year-old infants.. Communications Psychology. 3/37, 2025. Aix-Marseille University and École Normale Supérieure neuroresearchers reveal the presence of innate abilities one year olds to begin to achieve advanced linguistic skill. A precocious pedia sapiens seems to be foreordained to be able to read the world and compose literary discourses.

Compositionality is a means of constructing complex objects through the combination of simpler elements. Here, we propose that the underlying processes can often be reduced to a general mechanism of function application. Accordingly, we explore the origins of compositional language and at an earlier stage in the representations and thoughts in young infants. Infants correctly composed simple noun-verb sentences at 14 months, facial expressions with objects at 12 months, and mental physical transformations at 10 months. This offers evidence for function application, the essence of compositionality, in infancy, as emerging well before and the occasion of complex language.

De Arcangelis, Lucilla and Hans Herrmann. Learning as a Phenomenon Occurring in a Critical State. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107/3977, 2010. We cite this paper by University of Naples and ETH Zurich biophysicists for its earlier glimpse of how the brain’s critical poise between disorder and order serves the access and gain of new knowledge. See 2019 papers in the Integrated Information section for robust confirmations of this optimum facility.

Recent physiological measurements have provided clear evidence about scale-free avalanche brain activity and EEG spectra, addressing the classical enigma of how a chaotic system can learn or respond in a controlled and reproducible way. We propose that brain activity having features typical of systems at a critical point represents a crucial ingredient for learning. Our model is able to reproduce quantitatively the experimentally observed critical state of the brain and, at the same time, learns and remembers logical rules including the exclusive OR. Learning thus occurs via plastic adaptation of synaptic strengths and exhibits universal features. (Abstract)

Dehaene, Stanislav. How We Learn. New York: Viking, 2020. The College of France, Saclay cognitive neuroscientist and author (search) gives exposition to the latest findings about a deep, definitive capacity of human beings from a fetal stage through infancy and youth to form and hold an internal representation of their external environs. Three main parts – What is Learning?, How Our Brain Learns, and The Four Pillars: Attention, Active Engagement, Error Feedback, and Consolidation – are clearly put with an intent that an integrative neuroscience which emphasizes this activity can be availed for more appropriate teachings and schools. This knowledge-gaining process is seen to so distinguish our curious species that a new Homo Docens name is proposed as we ever educate ourselves.

Cortical folds in the fetus’s brain owe their spontaneous formation to a biochemical self-organization process that depends on both the genes and the chemical environment of the cells, requiring extremely little genetic information and no learning at all. Such self-organization isn’t nearly as paradoxical as it sounds – in fact, it is omnipresent on earth. (74)

Delafield-Butt, Jonathon and Anna Ciaunica. Sensorimotor foundations of self-consciousness in utero... Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.. October, 2024. As an example of the latest, sophisticated, non-invasive neurovision abilities, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and University of Lisbon researchers can now peer into a womb to witness these perceptive quickenings as a fetus begins to sense, stir and awaken.

We review recent work about a self-consciousness in utero in humans. We focus on inklings of an anticipatory perceptual awareness as a foetal sense of agency which is first evident in bodily movements of the second-trimester. These early occasions establish a basis for additional abstract, reflective, and conceptually conscious experience. Advanced understanding of these original developments may afford the natural basis of its original ontogeny, its expression mediated by the integrative nervous system and a better understanding of adult consciousness.

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