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Displaying entries 76 through 90 of 98 found.

Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twndividuality

Mentzou, Aikaterini and Josephine Ross.. The Emergence of Self-Awareness: Insights from Robotics. Human Development.. 68/2, 2024. University of Dundee psychologists cleverly set up a cross-reference between these two realms of how an infant becomes a child and current artificial modes might also gain such faculties. In regard, once again, as this whole chapter attests, it seems that a deep affinity (recapitulation) is becoming evident between our human procession and life’s long evolutionary course.

The ability for self-related thought is considered to be a uniquely human characteristic. As technological knowledge advances, it comes as no surprise that humanoid self-awareness is being explored. By a cross-disciplinary approach, we address this possibility by a comparative overview on the emergence of self-awareness as exemplified in both early childhood and robotics. We argue that developmental psychologists can gain valuable theoretical and methodological insights by such a comparison so as to better understand the behavioural occasions of human self-consciousness. (Abstract)

First Steps towards a Cross-Disciplinary Understanding of the Minimal Self In the last decades, empirical research on the early manifestations of the minimal self radically changed historical assumptions of viewing infants as entering the world in a state of “booming, buzzing, confusion between the self and the world.” From birth, infants demonstrate a pre-reflective level of self-awareness accompanied by a perceptual understanding of their own body as a unique and differentiated from other entities in the world as well as a rudimentary appreciation of their agency. These early experiences provide support for the idea that, from infancy, we are already equipped with a minimal self that is embodied, enactive, and ecologically tuned. (7)

Nikolic, Milos, et al. Scale invariance in early embryonic development.. arXiv:2312.17684. Ten Princeton and Peking University theorists including Eric Smith and William Bialek apply frontier techniques to study this iconic insect as another exemplary instance of a phenomenal, self-organized invariance, which can now be specifically traced to an independent generative source script.

The body plan of the fruit fly forms from the expression of just a few genes, which scales with the size of the embryo. Further, the information patterns provide can specify fractional, scaled or absolute positions. These observations suggest that the underlying genetic network exhibits scale invariance in a deeper mathematical sense. Taking this theoretic statement seriously requires that the network dynamics have a zero mode, which connects to many other observations on this system. (Excerpt)

Finally, recent experiments on mammalian pseudo-embryos suggest that scale invariance may be a more universal feature of genetic networks underlying developmental pattern formation (search Merle). In these self-organizing cellular populations, scale invariance emerges with boundaries that move as the aggregate grows. The existence of a zero mode in the regulatory network becomes even more attractive as a general mechanism for scaling. (10)

Powell, Nathaniel, et al. Common modular architecture across diverse cortical areas in early development.. PNAS. 121/11, 2024. By this mid year, Optical Imaging and Brain Sciences Medical Discovery Team, University of Minnesota, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and Columbia University neuroscientists are able to discern and report the presence of recurrent patterns and processes that develop to engender our human cerebral endowment.

How the diversity of functional organization across brain areas emerges during development is unclear. By imaging spontaneous activity in both sensory and higher-order cortices, we find that a distributed, modular architecture with long-range correlations is a common feature of the developing cortex. This suggests that instead of specific specializations already in place, cortical areas that reflect diverse representations develop from an initially similar structure. These modular networks exhibit strong quantitative similarity across areas, suggesting that the same organizing principles operate throughout the early cortex. Our findings suggest a generic modular organization serves as a cortical substrate. (Abstract)

Weiss, Stagi, et al. Trajectories of brain and behaviour development in the womb, at birth and through infancy. Nature Human Behaviour.. June, 2024. Cambridge University psychologists describe the latest understandings of a sensitive continuum from fetal stages with their own facilities through the parturient process and onto early infant stirrings.

Birth has long been seen as the starting point to study environmental effects on human development. However, recent imaging advances have revealed that the complex fetal behaviours and uterine features exert influence. The birth event is now viewed as a punctuate phase along a pathway of separation of the child from their mother. Here we highlight (1) physiological autonomy and perceptual sensitivity in the fetus, (2) physiological and neurochemical processes that influence future behaviour, (3) motor and sensory systems in the newborn to adapt to the world and (4) the effect of the prenatal environment on later infant behaviours and brain function.

Zanchi, Paola, et al. Differences in spatiotemporal brain network dynamics of Montessori and traditionally schooled students.. npj Science of Learning. Vol. 9/Art. 45, 2024. Nine neuropsychologists at Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Switzerland contrasted the cerebral and cognitive effects of standard schooling with proactive Montessori methods by sophisticated imaging studies and found notable, advantageous differences.

• School experience affects academic and social-emotional outcomes, yet whether differences in pedagogical experience modulate underlying brain network development is still unknown. In this study, we compared the brain network dynamics of students with different pedagogical backgrounds. Specifically, we characterized brain activity at rest by combining both resting-state fMRI and diffusion-weighted structural imaging data of 87 4–18 years old students experiencing either the Montessori pedagogy (student-led, trial-and-error) or the traditional pedagogy (teacher-led, test-based). Montessori students showed higher functional integration and neural stability compared to traditional students. (Abstract)

Courellis, Hristos, et al. Abstract representations emerge in human hippocampal neurons during inference.. Nature. August 14, 2024. We enter this work by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CalTech, Columbia University, University of Toronto and New York State Psychiatric Institute neuroscientists for its findings and also to reflect that we Earth peoples may be inherently made and meant to serve as the universe’s way of achieving its own self-description and recognition.

Humans have a cognitive capacity to rapidly adapt to changing environments which draws on an ability to form abstract representations of regularities in the world to support generalization. How these representations are encoded in populations of neurons, how they emerge through learning and how they relate to behavior remains mostly unknown. Learning to perform inference by trial and error or through verbal instructions led to the formation of hippocampal representations with similar geometric properties. The observed relation between representationalfor complex cognition. (Excerpt)

One solution is to encode variables in an abstract format so they can be re-used in new situations to facilitate generalization and compositionality. Here we show that such an abstract representation emerged in the human hippocampus as a function of learning to perform inference. Inferential reasoning is thought to rely on cognitive maps, which have been observed in the hippocampus and underlie inferential reasoning in various complex spatial domains. Here we show that a cognitive map that organizes stimulus identity and latent context in an ordered manner emerges in the hippocampus. (8)

Earth Earns: An Open CoCreative Earthropocene to Astropocene PediaVerse

Scheffer, Martin, et al. Anticipating the global redistribution of people and property.. One Earth. 7/7, 2024. Eight environmental scholars in the Netherlands, the UK and USA, Sweden, Canada and China including Tim Lenton andy Gaia Vince proceed to acknowledge increasing climate changes which will drive population movements especially from already imperiled places. With this in mind, we would do well to prepare in advance with suitable infrastructures, resource allocation, social policies and so on.

Climate change will worsen conditions for people in the Global South, while conditions in large parts of the North will improve. Migration seems an effective adaptation strategy. However, making that a win-win for migrants and receiving communities requires revision of the food system, rules for mobility, and strategies for social integration.

One Earth is a Cell Press prime sustainability journal. It provides a home for high-quality research and perspectives that advance our ability to better understand and address today’s many challenges. We publish monthly thematic issues that aspire to break down barriers between the natural, social and applied sciences and the humanities, stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas, and encourage transformative research.

Gupta, Joyeeta, et al. A just world on a safe planet: Earth Commission report on boundaries, translations, and transformations.. Lancet Planetary Health.. September 11, 2024. In this premier British medical journal series, over 60 coauthors such as Laura Pereira and Johan Rockstrom present and discuss this major environmental document and its critical-condition recommendations.

The health of the planet and its people are at risk. The deterioration of the global commons that support life on Earth is imperils energy, food, and water insecurity, and increases the risk of disease, disaster, displacement, and conflict. In this Commission, we quantify safe and just Earth-system boundaries (ESBs) and assess minimum access to natural resources required for human dignity and escape from poverty. Collectively, these describe a safe and just corridor essential to sustainable and resilient human planetary wellness in the Anthropocene. We define eight ESBs for five domains—the biosphere (functional integrity and natural ecosystem area), climate, nutrient cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen), freshwater (surface and groundwater), and aerosols—to reduce degrading biophysical life-support systems and avoid tipping points.

Joyeeta Gupta is a Dutch environmental scientist who is professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and co-chair of the Earth Commission, set up by Future Earth and supported by the Global Challenges Foundation.

Lancet Planetary Health is an interdisciplinary journal covering planetary health, the environment, sustainable development, and the SDGs, that highlights the work of those researchers committed to finding a path towards a better, more sustainable, and healthier future.

Scheffer, Martin, et al. Scheffer, Martin, et al. Anticipating the global redistribution of people and property.. One Earth. 7/7, 2024. Eight environmental scholars in the Netherlands, the UK and USA, Sweden, Canada and China including Tim Lenton and Gaia Vince proceed to acknowledge increasing climate changes over a finite biosphere which will drive population movements especially from already imperiled places. With this in mind, we would do well to prepare in advance with suitable infrastructures, resource allocation, social policies and so on.