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With evidence that determinants of psychosis are present early and influence brain development, and in the absence of a significant environmental contribution, schizophrenia may be regarded as a genetic encephalopathy. Morphological abnormalities are particularly apparent in the temporal lobe and on the left side of the brain, and in a number of studies significant diagnosis x side interactions have been detected. Such interactions suggest an intimate relationship between the disease process and the mechanisms that determine asymmetrical brain development. These mechanisms presumably relate to the human capacity for speech and communication, and they may have played a critical role in the evolution of the human brain. A candidate locus for an asymmetry determinant and the psychosis gene within the exchange region of the sex chromosomes is proposed. Some sex differences in schizophrenia (e.g., with respect to age of onset and brain structure) may relate to subtle differences in the rate of asymmetry development in the two sexes.

As the brain is responsible for managing an individual's behavioral response to its environment, we should expect that large relative brain size is an evolutionary response to cognitively challenging behaviors. The "social brain hypothesis" argues that maintaining group cohesion is cognitively demanding as individuals living in groups need to be able to resolve conflicts that impact on their ability to meet resource requirements. If sociality does impose cognitive demands, we expect changes in relative brain size and sociality to be coupled over evolutionary time. In this study, we analyze data on sociality and relative brain size for 206 species of ungulates, carnivores, and primates and provide, for the first time, evidence that changes in sociality and relative brain size are closely correlated over evolutionary time for all three mammalian orders. This suggests a process of coevolution and provides support for the social brain theory. However, differences between taxonomic orders in the stability of the transition between small-brained/nonsocial and large-brained/social imply that, although sociality is cognitively demanding, sociality and relative brain size can become decoupled in some cases. Carnivores seem to have been especially prone to this.

The social brain hypothesis argues that large brains have arisen over evolutionary time as a response to the social and ecological conflicts inherent in group living. We test predictions arising from the hypothesis using comparative data from birds and four mammalian orders (Carnivora, Artiodactyla, Chiroptera and Primates) and show that, across all non-primate taxa, relative brain size is principally related to pairbonding, but with enduring stable relationships in primates. We argue that this reflects the cognitive demands of the behavioural coordination and synchrony that is necessary to maintain stable pairbonded relationships. However, primates differ from the other taxa in that they also exhibit a strong effect of group size on brain size. We use data from two behavioural indices of social intensity (enduring bonds between group members and time devoted to social activities) to show that primate relationships differ significantly from those of other taxa. We suggest that, among vertebrates in general, pairbonding represents a qualitative shift from loose aggregations of individuals to complex negotiated relationships, and that these bonded relationships have been generalized to all social partners in only a few taxa (such as anthropoid primates).

Consistent with and in extension of the “social brain hypothesis,” I discuss the idea that the intuition of free will emerged during the course of primate social evolution. If, as the “social brain hypothesis” alleges, the main selective pressure among primates is on generating social knowledge about one's cooperators and competitors, then it is the knowledge about others and not the knowledge about oneself that is the scarce cognitive resource. It is beneficial to make the others predictable and to form hypotheses about their probable behavioral tendencies. This is done by behavior reading and mind reading and by classifying the recurring stochastic patterns in everyday language as the “will.” Thus, the idea of free will emerged first as a social attribution and not as an introspectively gained insight. The fact that ego applies the idea of freedom also to itself and considers itself to be as free as it considers the social partners to be free, i.e. unpredictable, is in this view a non-selected by-product of social intelligence.

We present a detailed reanalysis of the comparative brain data for primates, and develop a model using path analysis that seeks to present the coevolution of primate brain (neocortex) and sociality within a broader ecological and life-history framework. We show that body size, basal metabolic rate and life history act as constraints on brain evolution and through this influence the coevolution of neocortex size and group size. However, they do not determine either of these variables, which appear to be locked in a tight coevolutionary system. We show that, within primates, this relationship is specific to the neocortex. Nonetheless, there are important constraints on brain evolution; we use path analysis to show that, in order to evolve a large neocortex, a species must first evolve a large brain to support that neocortex and this in turn requires adjustments in diet (to provide the energy needed) and life history (to allow sufficient time both for brain growth and for ‘software’ programming). We review a wider literature demonstrating a tight coevolutionary relationship between brain size and sociality in a range of mammalian taxa, but emphasize that the social brain hypothesis is not about the relationship between brain/neocortex size and group size per se ; rather, it is about social complexity and we adduce evidence to support this. Finally, we consider the wider issue of how mammalian (and primate) brains evolve in order to localize the social effects.

The paradox of psychosis – that interindividual variation apparently genetic in origin persists at approximately the same frequency in all populations in the face of a fecundity disadvantage – is resolved in the thesis that this variation is a component of the variation associated with the capacity for language, and that language and psychosis have a common evolutionary origin in the speciation event. Broca’s hypothesis that cerebral asymmetry is the sapiens-specific characteristic is encapsulated in the cerebral torque (the bias from right frontal to left occipital across the anteroposterior axis) that defines the human brain as a four-chambered organ by comparison with the two chambers (anterior motor and posterior sensory) of the brains of other primates. This arrangement dictates a reversal of convergence of interhemispheric connections (from left to right posteriorly and from right to left anteriorly) that separates sensory and motor phonological engrams in the left hemisphere from meanings and thoughts, respectively, in the right hemisphere and defines the language circuit. The nuclear symptoms of schizophrenia are viewed as evidence of leakages from the four chambers that reveal the critical nature of the distinction between what is self-generated and what is other-generated in relation to the deictic core of language. The genetics of asymmetry are associated with the duplicative translocation at 6Mya that created a sapiens-specific region of homology between the Xq21.3 and Yp11 bands, within which the ProtocadherinXY gene pair coding for cell surface adhesion proteins has been subject to accelerated evolution. The putative sequence of events in the sapiens lineage exemplifies a role for shared DNA sequences on the two sex chromosomes to modulate the effects of a rearrangement on the heterogametic chromosome in a phase of sexual selection to establish the mate recognition system (in Paterson’s sense) that defines the new species.

The literature on sexual selection and the social brain hypothesis suggest that human cognition and communication evolved, in part, for the purpose of displaying desirable cognitive abilities to potential mates. An evolutionary approach to social cognition implies that proximate mating motives may lead people to display desirable mental traits. In signaling such traits, one can increase the likelihood of attracting a potential mate. Two experiments demonstrated that exposure to mating cues—highly attractive opposite-sex faces—led people to display enhancements in declarative memory—a process underlying a variety of abilities such as resource acquisition, intelligence, and creativity. Experiment 1 showed that men (but not women) displayed enhanced memory for details of a story that was presented during exposure to highly attractive opposite-sex faces. Experiment 2 demonstrated that heightened displays of declarative memory reflect an enhancement in retrieval rather than in encoding. Findings contribute to the literatures on human mating and cognitive performance and provide novel insight into links between social processes and basic cognition.

The social brain hypothesis assumes the evolution of social behaviour changes animals' ecological environments, and predicts evolutionary shifts in social structure will be associated with changes in brain investment. Most social brain models to date assume social behaviour imposes additional cognitive challenges to animals, favouring the evolution of increased brain investment. Here, we present a modification of social brain models, which we term the distributed cognition hypothesis. Distributed cognition models assume group members can rely on social communication instead of individual cognition; these models predict reduced brain investment in social species. To test this hypothesis, we compared brain investment among 29 species of wasps (Vespidae family), including solitary species and social species with a wide range of social attributes (i.e. differences in colony size, mode of colony founding and degree of queen/worker caste differentiation). We compared species means of relative size of mushroom body (MB) calyces and the antennal to optic lobe ratio, as measures of brain investment in central processing and peripheral sensory processing, respectively. In support of distributed cognition predictions, and in contrast to patterns seen among vertebrates, MB investment decreased from solitary to social species. Among social species, differences in colony founding, colony size and caste differentiation were not associated with brain investment differences. Peripheral lobe investment did not covary with social structure. These patterns suggest the strongest changes in brain investment—a reduction in central processing brain regions—accompanied the evolutionary origins of eusociality in Vespidae.

For over a century, various neuroanatomical measures have been employed as assays of cognitive ability in comparative studies. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether these measures actually correspond to cognitive ability. A recent meta-analysis of cognitive performance of a broad set of primate species has made it possible to provide a quantitative estimate of general cognitive ability across primates. We find that this estimate is not strongly correlated with neuroanatomical measures that statistically control for a possible effect of body size, such as encephalization quotient or brain size residuals. Instead, absolute brain size measures were the best predictors of primate cognitive ability. Moreover, there was no indication that neocortex-based measures were superior to measures based on the whole brain. The results of previous comparative studies on the evolution of intelligence must be reviewed with this conclusion in mind.

James M. Sikela ABSTRACT T he recent publication of the initial sequence and analysis of the chimp genome allows us, for the first time, to compare our genome with that of our closest living evolutionary relative. With more primate genome sequences being pursued, and with other genome-wide, cross- species comparative techniques emerging, we are entering an era in which we will be able to carry out genomic comparisons of unprecedented scope and detail. These studies should yield a bounty of new insights about the genes and genomic features that are unique to our species as well as those that are unique to other primate lineages, and may begin to causally link some of these to lineage-specific phenotypic characteristics. The most intriguing potential of these new approaches will be in the area of evolutionary neurogenomics and in the possibility that the key human lineage-specific (HLS) genomic changes that underlie the evolution of the human brain will be identified. Such new knowledge should provide fresh insights into neuronal development and higher cognitive function and dysfunction, and may possibly uncover biological mechanisms for information storage, analysis, and retrieval never previously seen.

Comparative psychologists interested in the evolution of intelligence have focused their attention on social primates, whereas birds tend to be used as models of associative learning. However, corvids and parrots, which have forebrains relatively the same size as apes, live in complex social groups and have a long developmental period before becoming independent, have demonstrated ape-like intelligence. Although, ornithologists have documented thousands of hours observing birds in their natural habitat, they have focused their attention on avian behaviour and ecology, rather than intelligence. This review discusses recent studies of avian cognition contrasting two different approaches; the anthropocentric approach and the adaptive specialization approach. It is argued that the most productive method is to combine the two approaches. This is discussed with respects to recent investigations of two supposedly unique aspects of human cognition; episodic memory and theory of mind. In reviewing the evidence for avian intelligence, corvids and parrots appear to be cognitively superior to other birds and in many cases even apes. This suggests that complex cognition has evolved in species with very different brains through a process of convergent evolution rather than shared ancestry, although the notion that birds and mammals may share common neural connectivity patterns is discussed.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gordon_Gallup2/publication/285047353_Book_Review_The_Evolution_of_Intelligence/links/57a8870f08aed76703f709eb/Book-Review-The-Evolution-of-Intelligence.pdf

The social brain hypothesis proposes that large neocortex size in Homonoids evolved to cope with the increasing demands of complex group living and greater numbers of interindividual relationships. Group living requires that individuals communicate effectively about environmental and internal events. Recent data have highlighted the complexity of chimpanzee communication, including graded facial expressions and referential vocalizations. Among Hominoids, elaborate facial communication is accompanied by specializations in brain areas controlling facial movement. Finally, the evolution of empathy, or emotional awareness, might have a neural basis in specialized cells in the neocortex, that is, spindle cells that have been associated with self-conscious emotions, and mirror neurons that have recently been shown to activate in response to communicative facial gestures.

The study, and the companion article that follows, reviews the entire spectrum of the epoch-making contributions of Constantin von Economo (1876-1931) to basic, clinical and evolutionary Neuroscience. An astute observer and avid writer, von Economo left marks of brilliance on fundamental areas of brain research through an exuberant record of publications dating from 1899 to 1932. His ingenious medical career began with the histological study of the developing pigeon and chick hypophysis, and culminated with bold propositions about the neuroanatomy of talent and the future evolution of the human brain. On the way, he made the seminal discovery of encephalitis lethargica ('von Economo disease'), and produced, with Georg N. Koskinas (1885-1975), one of the masterpieces of brain science, the 1925 Cytoarchitectonics of the Adult Human Cerebral Cortex, defining 107 cortical areas on the basis of cytoarchitectonic criteria. His untimely death at age 55, barely 5.5 months after inaugurating his new Brain Research Institute in Vienna, deprived the Neuroscience world of one of its brightest protagonists during the 20th century. An annotated total of 139 scientific works by von Economo have been identified. The present study covers the 76 works on brain structure, evolution and intelligence, and general works on nervous and mental pathology, with the complete bibliographic information. The companion article covers the remaining 63 works on encephalitis lethargica and sleep regulation.

This paper proposes a scenario which allows one to study one-to-one interactions between robots in 'individualized' societies. We are inspired by the 'social intelligence hypothesis', which comes from primatology and states that primate intelligence originally evolved to solve social problems. If this is one important factor in the evolution of intelligence and cognition in primates, we suggest, that it might be a general principle in the evolution of intelligent artefacts, not necessarily restricted to a biological substrate. Therefore we work with robots which should be able to collect experiences from individual interactions and recognize each other in order to establish individual 'personal' relationships. We use a hilly habitat which (1) allows one to concentrate on aspects of social interaction without using obstacles or object manipulation and (2) provides enough complexity and ways for the robots to behave 'meaningfully'. The robots communicate explicitly by synchronization and matching of movement. This behavior is the key to a symbiosis-like relationship, i.e. it is necessary for the survival of the individual.

The chapter reviews the common themes, the network models, and the mathematical formalism underlying the recent studies about different stages in the evolution of the human brain. These studies discuss the evolution of cortical networks in terms of their computations, quantified by simulating simplified formal models. All such models are conceived as variants of a basic autoassociative neural network model, and their storage capacity, even when not formally analyzed, plays an important role in the results. All studies include, as a necessary ingredient of the relevant computational mechanism, a simple feature of pyramidal cell biophysics: firing rate adaptation—a feature which to be treated properly requires extending the thermodynamics formalism into a full analysis of network dynamics. The approach is that while there is not necessarily a coupling between structural and functional phase transitions, understanding both at the mechanistic neural network level is a necessary step to understand the evolution of the organ of thought.

Several recent microarray studies have compared gene-expression patterns n humans, chimpanzees and other non-human primates to identify evolutionary changes that contribute to the distinctive cognitive and behavioural characteristics of humans. These studies support the surprising conclusion that the evolution of the human brain involved an upregulation of gene expression relative to non-human primates, a finding that could be relevant to understanding human cerebral physiology and function. These results show how genetic and genomic methods can shed light on the basis of human neural and cognitive specializations, and have important implications for neuroscience, anthropology and medicine.

Two recently published studies provide important new data relevant to the evolution of human intelligence. Both studies of social behavior in baboons, Bergman et al. demonstrated that baboons use two criteria simultaneously to classify other troop members, and Silk et al. showed that highly social female baboons have higher reproductive success than less social females. Taken together, these studies provide strong evidence for the importance of social context in cognitive evolution.

List of contributors Preface 1. Evolutionary reconstructions of great ape intelligence Anne E. Russon 2. Enhanced cognitive capacity as a contingent fact of hominid phylogeny David R. Begun Part I. Cognition in Living Great Apes: Introduction Anne E. Russon: 3. The manual skills and cognition that lie behind hominid tool use Richard W. Byrne 4. The cognitive complexity of social organisation and socialisation in wild baboons and chimpanzees: guided participation, socialising interactions and event representation Sue Taylor Parker 5. Gestural communication in the great apes Joanna Blake 6. Great ape cognitive systems Anne E. Russon Part II. Modern Great Ape Adaptation: Introduction Anne E. Russon: 7. What's in a brain? The question of a distinctive brain anatomy in great apes Carol E. MacLeod 8. Life histories and the evolution of large brain size in great apes Caroline Ross 9. Evolution of complex feeding techniques in primates: is this the origin of great ape intelligence? Gen Yamakoshi 10. The special demands of great ape locomotion and posture Kevin D. Hunt 11. Great ape social systems Carel P. van Schaik, Signe Preuschoft and David P. Watts 12. Diet and foraging of the great apes: ecological constraints on their social organisations and implications for their divergence Juichi Yamagiwa Part III. Fossil Great Ape Adaptations: Introduction David R. Begun: 13. Paleoenvironments and the evolution of adaptability in great apes Richard Potts 14. Cranial evidence and the evolution of intelligence in fossil apes David R. Begun and Laszlo Kordos 15. Life history and cognitive evolution in the apes Jay Kelley 16. Fossil hominoid diets, extractive foraging and the origins of great ape intelligence Michelle Singleton 17. Paleontology, terrestriality and the intelligence of great apes Daniel L. Gebo 18. Body size and intelligence in hominoid evolution Carol V. Ward, Mark Flinn and David R. Begun Part IV. Integration: 19. Evolutionary origins of great ape intelligence: an integrated view Anne E. Russon and David R. Begun Author index Species index Subject index.

This note summarizes our general line of research on the evolution of intelligence with a particular emphasis on human language and mathematics as innate cognitive faculties, capabilities, which set our species apart from non-human primates. At the psychological level of abstraction, human intelligence can be considered as a collection of interacting modules of such mental faculties as language, theory of Mind (ToM), meta-mind and others (Shah 1998). Modules at lower level can be considered as “pre-adaptations” in the evolutionary sense that these are required for the emergence of higher cognitive functions like inventing mathematics and generation and comprehension of language. We outline our “emergence-at-threshold” model of language in terms of other ‘simpler ’ mental faculties such as ToM and unbounded generativity, namely FLN of Hauser-Chomsky-Fitch (2002). Using this model, we estimate that modern human language, FLB in Hauser-Chomsky-Fitch (HCF) sense, emerged around 40,000 years ago.

Numerous studies appear to support the link between a species9 group size and neocortex size, especially among primates. And recently, a number of brain-scanning studies in humans and monkeys have found correlations between the size of social networks and that of specific brain areas linked to sociality. One study of people, for example, found a positive relationship between gray matter density and the number of Facebook friends an individual has. Yet there are competing explanations for our big brains, and some researchers are concerned that the social brain hypothesis may be too simplistic to account for the complex course of human brain evolution. (Read about more "Mysteries of the Brain.")

SummaryThe social brain hypothesis generically posits that increasing social group size relates is associated with an increase in neocortex size. A new study identifies, within a species, the specific neural circuit that may confer the primate ability to manage social relationships as they increase in number.

Hominization of the brain is the evolution of the human brain traits that discriminate the genus Homo from its primate ancestors. In the human's cognition, one of the characteristics of hominization is an evolutionary hierarchy of the information centers. Its ascending limbs consist of: the primary sensory cortices, higher order sensory cortical areas, the association cortices; and its descending limbs consist of: higher order motor cortices that feed the primary motor cortices. We may intervene in the processing, especially that taking place in the association cortices. We monitor and manipulate the processing by retrieving, modifying, storing or replaying the informational material: thinking whatever at all. Here we have a virtual experience. This ability expands to processing even in the substantial absence of any perceivable objects, enabling us to communicate with verbal words and with symbols and letters. We can train ourselves to better operate computers, in an adaptation of the human being to the machinery. However, shall we be "sensed" and "cognized" when we engage in selected jobs and our ever-changing intention is deciphered by the computers? If so, will the computers manipulate and control machinery and fulfill jobs on our behalf? Or, are we to evolve ourselves to the needs of the computer technology? If so, can we efficiently monitor our own errors and have the errors promptly corrected?.

Communication begins at the birth with senses like touch, vision and finally with speech and hearing. Each child needs to learn the "cultural codes" because the language of each culture is different. However, if a child is to learn about his/her world, the ability to communicate must exist. Even after a baby learns the fundamentals of com- munication through senses, those skills need to continue to be refined. Then the brain is ready to deal with the concepts involved in reading, writing, comprehension of a language or concepts and body language. The article is a distribution of concepts with concern to the development of communication or language as goes the famous uncertainty- "First came egg or the hen?" In this age of dominant research being done on languages, culture and their acquisition to challenge identity of status, we should not thoughtlessly walk past the chronology of the origin of "communication" and "language" as to which came first. And accordingly we can focus about their implications in the classrooms, for the overall development of the budding engineers and technocrats. While talking of the history and development of particular languages, one question has intrigued scholars for ages and that is the origin and evaluation of language in the human species in general? And what was the nature of the first lan - guage? Considerable evidence suggests that the capacity for language is a species-specific, biologically innate trait of hu - man beings. Another question haunts, as to what came first, " language' or " communication'? Did we already have a lan- guage for communication or simply we communicated with- out any language in the pre-historic times? One idea sparsely satiating this quest could be that human beings began to mimic the sounds of nature and used these sounds as refer- ents for the sources of the sound. This theory is sometimes disparagingly referred to as the "bow-wow" theory. The ex- istence of onomatopoeic words such as bow-wow, meow, crash, boom might be taken as evidence of such mimicking. It has also been suggested that a gesture language- that is, a system of hand gestures, facial expressions and signals also played a role in passing messages. In addition, it is some- times speculated that human language gradually evolved from the need for humans to communicate with each other in coordinating certain group tasks. The idea here is that peo- ple working in groups can co-operate more efficiently if they can use a vocal language to communicate. But such "func- tional" theories of the origin of language seem quite dubi- ous. Why couldn't a sign language or gesture language work as a communication system in the context of groups at work? But once human language evolved, it came to be exploited fully for all kinds of social functions; but the needs involved in such functions cannot be identified as the first cause of lan - guage evolution. At present the most reasonable suggestion about the origin and evolution of human language is that it was intimately linked with the evolution of the human brain. Over the last 5 million years there has been a striking increase in brain size, ranging from about 400 cubic centimeters in our distant hominid ancestors to about 1,400 cubic centimeters in modern Homo sapiens. The mere increase in brain size would not necessarily have led to superior intelligence and the evolution of language, since dolphins, for example, have a brain comparable in size to that of humans, yet they have only a rudimentary communication systems. Furthermore, even a mere increase in general intelligence might not neces

Humans are capable of simply observing a correlation between cause and effect, and then producing a novel behavioural pattern in order to recreate the same outcome. However, it is unclear how the ability to create such causal interventions evolved. Here, we show that while 24-month-old children can produce an effective, novel action after observing a correlation, tool-making New Caledonian crows cannot. These results suggest that complex tool behaviours are not sufficient for the evolution of this ability, and that causal interventions can be cognitively and evolutionarily disassociated from other types of causal understanding.

Darwin argued that between-species differences in intelligence were differences of degree, not of kind. The contemporary ecological approach to animal cognition argues that animals have evolved species-specific and problem-specific processes to solve problems associated with their particular ecological niches: thus different species use different processes, and within a species, different processes are used to tackle problems involving different inputs. This approach contrasts both with Darwin's view and with the general process view, according to which the same central processes of learning and memory are used across an extensive range of problems involving very different inputs. We review evidence relevant to the claim that the learning and memory performance of non-human animals varies according to the nature of the stimuli involved. We first discuss the resource distribution hypothesis, olfactory learning-set formation, and the ‘biological constraints’ literature, but find no convincing support from these topics for the ecological account of cognition. We then discuss the claim that the performance of birds in spatial tasks of learning and memory is superior in species that depend heavily upon stored food compared to species that either show less dependence upon stored food or do not store food. If it could be shown that storing species enjoy a superiority specifically in spatial (and not non-spatial) tasks, this would argue that spatial tasks are indeed solved using different processes from those used in non-spatial tasks. Our review of this literature does not find a consistent superiority of storing over non-storing birds in spatial tasks, and, in particular, no evidence of enhanced superiority of storing species when the task demands are increased, by, for example, increasing the number of items to be recalled or the duration of the retention period. We discuss also the observation that the hippocampus of storing birds is larger than that of non-storing birds, and find evidence contrary to the view that hippocampal enlargement is associated with enhanced spatial memory; we are, however, unable to suggest a convincing alternative explanation for hippocampal enlargement. The failure to find solid support for the ecological view supports the view that there are no qualitative differences in cognition between animal species in the processes of learning and memory. We also argue that our review supports our contention that speculation about the phylogenetic development and function of behavioural processes does not provide a solid basis for gaining insight into the nature of those processes. We end by confessing to a belief in one major qualitative difference in cognition in animals: we believe that humans alone are capable of acquiring language, and that it is this capacity that divides our intelligence so sharply from non-human intelligence.

Social Darwinism, the well-known application of Darwin’s theory to explain societal evolution, became discredited because it restricted the complex societal, multicausal evolution exclusively to natural, external selection, adaptation, or, in the words of game theory: to solutions of competitive conflicts between individual interests. According to Dennett (Dennett 1991: 17–28, 520), there looms behind Darwin’s book The origin of species “Darwin’s cultural, most dangerous idea” of evolution as the only creative process we know so far. In this century, this idea received more and more attention; it has greatly enhanced our present understanding of societal evolution. The idea’s dangerous and revolutionary implications are that it proved scientifically and successfully that evolution is not only the creation or self-organization of species but of all physical and chemical forms of matter, of all forms of life, of the human brain, and of its enormous creativity within human societies, cultures, sciences. This idea returned the problem of evolution to the central issue that scientists have been avoiding for too long, to the problem of self-organization and creation. Self-organization begins with the self-organizational processes of physical, chemical-prebiontic, and genetic evolution; it ends with the creativity of the human brain during societal evolution. Especially the coevolution of the evolution of the human brain and of societal evolution in today’s democratic societies is taken seriously by evolutionists and brain physiologists. It will be the main topic of this article because it fostered an increase of human creativity in the twentieth century never known before. Some hypotheses on the dynamic of the sensory and cognitive processing in the brain put forth by the group around Basar will be used in this article.

Many animals are capable of learning skills and acquiring information from others, and this ‘social learning’ is often sufficient to maintain behavioral traditions in animal populations. Social learning is not restricted to humans, primates, or clever animals, but is a fundamental feature of vertebrate life. Animals may acquire foraging skills, dietary preferences, songs or calls, mating preferences, or learn to identify predators, from other animals. A variety of psychological processes can result in social learning. Empirical studies suggest that the probability that an individual innovates to generate a novel behavior, learns from others, or transmits information to others, is critically dependent on the individual's identity. Theoretical analyses have delineated the conditions under which natural selection should favor reliance on social information. Social learning may play a pivotal role in the evolution of intelligence and large brains.

Pennsylvania State University Anthropology Pennsylvania 16802 USA E-mail: avbuchanan@gmail.com Quirks of Human Anatomy: An Evo-devo Look at the Human Body, by Lewis I. Held, Jr. is a lively romp through the evolution of the human body – with particular attention to traits that do not work so well, which he calls ‘‘quirks’’. He wrote the book for last year’s celebration of Darwin’s 200 birthday and the 150 anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, but it will easily stand on its own now that the champagne has been drunk and the party hats put away. The book is well written, with humor and a real passion for the subject. The illustrations are clear and informative, and, as the text, packed with details. To quote Held, ‘‘This book was written as a kind of amusement park. Its thematic ‘pretend game’ is to inspect each body part through the eyes of an alien visitor who asks, ‘Why is it this way and not that?’’’ His answers are based on current developmental genetics, explained within a Darwinian evolutionary framework. Held organizes his discussion around issues that have long occupied developmental biologists: the symmetry and asymmetry of the body plan, organization along the midline, segmentation and modularity, sexual dimorphism, and the evolution of intelligence. And then he asks questions such as why we are symmetric on the outside but asymmetric within, why our ears start out on our neck, why men go bald, or how and why humans acquired intelligence. So, why are we symmetric outside but asymmetric within?

An analysis of the evolution of intelligence and survival strategy of certain materials is presented in this paper. Materials have been further classified in this paper based on their smartness or intelligence. The criteria used in the analysis involve matter, energy, information, and geometry. Also, a novel perspective on the meaning of intelligence is proposed. Thus, a system is considered to be intelligent if it normally possesses a survival strategy with regards to its state of being. Essentially, new definitions for information and hierarchical structures have been added to the classical matter-energy dualism. The influence of geometry has proved to be very important in the evolution and properties of matter. Based on the characteristics of the living systems a correlation between living and non-living systems has been established. It has also been demonstrated that the geometrical shape of a material structure is determined by its survival strategy. Furthermore, hierarchical structures of intelligent materials have been analyzed from geometrical point of view. This has led to the conclusion that geometry represents a complementary factor in the intelligence of materials.

Contents: Preface. R.J. Sternberg, The Search for Criteria: Why Study the Evolution of Intelligence? J.B. Grossman, J.C. Kaufman, Evolutionary Psychology: Promise and Perils. D.F. Bjorklund, K. Kipp, Social Cognition, Inhibition, and Theory of Mind: The Evolution of Human Intelligence. J.L. Bradshaw, The Evolution of Intellect: Cognitive, Neurological, and Primatological Aspects and Hominid Culture. R.W. Byrne, The Primate Origins of Human Intelligence. W.H. Calvin, Pumping Up Intelligence: Abrupt Climate Jumps and the Evolution of Higher Intellectual Functions During the Ice Ages. M.C. Corballis, Evolution of the Generative Mind. L. Cosmides, J. Tooby, Unraveling the Enigma of Human Intelligence: Evolutionary Psychology and the Multimodular Mind. O. Flanagan, V.G. Hardcastle, E. Nahmias, Is Human Intelligence an Adaptation? Cautionary Observations From the Philosophy of Biology. P. Godfrey-Smith, Environmental Complexity and the Evolution of Cognition. H.J. Jerison, On Theory in Comparative Psychology. A. Lynch, Evolutionary Contagion in Mental Software. I.M. Pepperberg, Evolution of Avian Intelligence, With an Emphasis on Grey Parrots (Psittacus Erithacus). H. Plotkin, Intelligence as Predisposed Skeptical Induction Engines. P. Bloom, Get Smart.

The evolution of human cooperativity can be explained to a considerable extent on the basis of “kin selection” and generalized concepts of “reciprocal altruism”. However, it is difficult to subsume empathy, which is a major motive for cooperation and other forms of altruistic behaviour, under these notions. In this paper, it is suggested that cognition-based empathy, perspective-taking linked to vicarious emotions, has evolved as a secondary effect of the evolution of strategic thought. The latter requires the comparative assessment of scenarios according to their emotional desirability, and this depends on representations of one’s own possible future states in one’s brain. Further, efficient strategic thought depends on the representation of possible states of others, to be assessed with respect to emotional quality, allowing for predictions of their behaviour in different possible situations. This is best achieved if representations of others are connected to one’s own emotional centres. Therefore, the evolution of the human brain is assumed to have established the capability of representations with such linkages. Neuroembryological considerations, based on combinatorial and hierarchical features of gene regulation involved in neural development suggest that only a limited amount of genetic change may be required. The resulting increase in the quality of strategic thought increases the fitness of the individual and is thus selected for in evolution.

Synapses are the structural components developed by nature to allow neuronal communication and consequently they are the fundamental sites at which the integrative functions of the central nervous system, such as intelligence and others activities of integration of less importance, are carried through. In this contribution, from both phylogenetic and ontogenetic points of view, the origin of synapses was analyzed and commented in relation to the evolution of intelligence on Earth, herein interpreted as the capacity of matter to understand matter. This approach could also be useful for the comprehension of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Spotted hyaenas, Crocuta crocuta, are gregarious carnivores whose social lives share much in common with those of cercopithecine primates. We conducted playback experiments to determine whether free-living hyaenas are capable of identifying individual conspecifics on the basis of their long-distance vocalization, the 'whoop'. When prerecorded cub whoops were played to mothers and other breeding females (controls), mothers responded significantly more vigorously to whoops of their own cubs than did controls. We also tested the hypothesis that specific vocal recognition abilities are based on kinship in this species. Listeners that were related to the whooping cub responded more vigorously to recorded vocalizations than did unrelated individuals, with response intensity in some cases increasing directly with the size of the coefficient of relatedness (r). Our final goal was to determine whether control animals in these experiments can recognize third-party social relationships among other group members, an ability demonstrated by vervet monkeys, Cercopithecus aethiops, in similar playback experiments conducted by earlier investigators. In contrast to vervets, control females in the present experiments were no more likely to look at the mother of the whooping cub than at other control females after playback. This suggests that hyaenas may accomplish many of the same social feats as do vervets without possessing the ability to recognize third-party relationships. If confirmed in other domains of hyaena social life, our findings have important implications regarding selection pressures favouring the evolution of intelligence. Copyright 1999 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Social challenges may have driven the evolution of intelligence in primates and other taxa. In primates, the social intelligence hypothesis is supported by evidence that primates know a lot about their own relationships to others and also know something about the nature of relationships among other individuals (third-party relationships). Knowledge of third-party relationships is likely to play an especially important role in coalitions, which occur when one individual intervenes in an ongoing dispute involving other group members, by helping individuals to predict who will support or intervene against them when they are fighting with particular opponents, and to assess which potential allies are likely to be effective in coalitions against their opponents. To date, however, there is no evidence that primates make use of knowledge of third-party relationships when they form coalitions. Here, I show that male bonnet macaques, Macaca radiata, use information about third-party rank relationships when they recruit support from other males. Males consistently chose allies that outranked themselves and their opponents, and made such choices considerably more often than would be expected by chance alone. The analysis shows that the data do not fit simpler explanations based upon males' knowledge of their own relationships to other males or males' ability to recognize powerful allies. Copyright 1999 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Since the BBS article in which Premack and Woodruff (1978) asked “Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?,” it has been repeatedly claimed that there is observational and experimental evidence that apes have mental state concepts, such as “want” and “know.” Unlike research on the development of theory of mind in childhood, however, no substantial progress has been made through this work with nonhuman primates. A survey of empirical studies of imitation, self-recognition, social relationships, deception, role-taking, and perspective-taking suggests that in every case where nonhuman primate behavior has been interpreted as a sign of theory of mind, it could instead have occurred by chance or as a product of nonmentalistic processes such as associative learning or inferences based on nonmental categories. Arguments to the effect that, in spite of this, the theory of mind hypothesis should be accepted because it is more parsimonious than alternatives or because it is supported by convergent evidence are not compelling. Such arguments are based on unsupportable assumptions about the role of parsimony in science and either ignore the requirement that convergent evidence proceed from independent assumptions, or fail to show that it supports the theory of mind hypothesis over nonmentalist alternatives. Progress in research on theory of mind requires experimental procedures that can distinguish the theory of mind hypothesis from nonmentalist alternatives. A procedure that may have this potential is proposed. It uses conditional discrimination training and transfer tests to determine whether chimpanzees have the concept “see.” Commentators are invited to identify flaws in the procedure and to suggest alternatives.

The social brain hypothesis argues that large brains have arisen over evolutionary time as a response to the social and ecological conflicts inherent in group living. We test predictions arising from the hypothesis using comparative data from birds and four mammalian orders (Carnivora, Artiodactyla, Chiroptera and Primates) and show that, across all non-primate taxa, relative brain size is principally related to pairbonding, but with enduring stable relationships in primates. We argue that this reflects the cognitive demands of the behavioural coordination and synchrony that is necessary to maintain stable pairbonded relationships. However, primates differ from the other taxa in that they also exhibit a strong effect of group size on brain size. We use data from two behavioural indices of social intensity (enduring bonds between group members and time devoted to social activities) to show that primate relationships differ significantly from those of other taxa. We suggest that, among vertebrates in general, pairbonding represents a qualitative shift from loose aggregations of individuals to complex negotiated relationships, and that these bonded relationships have been generalized to all social partners in only a few taxa (such as anthropoid primates).

Gene Regulation, Brain Evolution, Neural Network, Empathy, Evolution of Altruism A network of gene regulation organized in a hierarchical and combinatorial manner is crucially involved in the development of the neural network, and has to be considered one of the main substrates of genetic change in its evolution. Though qualitative features may emerge by way of the accumulation of rather unspecific quantitative changes, it is reasonable to assume that at least in some cases specific combinations of regulatory parts of the genome initiated new directions of evolution, leading to novel capabilities of the brain. These notions are applied, in this paper, to the evolution of the capability of cognition-based human empa­thy. It is suggested that it has evolved as a secondary effect of the evolution of strategic thought. Development of strategies depends on abstract representations of one’s own pos­sible future states in one’s own brain to allow assessment of their emotional desirability, but also on the representation and emotional evaluation of possible states of others, allowing anticipation of their behaviour. This is best achieved if representations of others are con­nected to one’s own emotional centres in a manner similar to self-representations. For this reason, the evolution of the human brain is assumed to have established representations with such linkages. No group selection is involved, because the quality of strategic thought affects the fitness of the individual. A secondary effect of this linkage is that both the actual states and the future perspectives of others elicit vicarious emotions, which may contribute to the motivations of altruistic behaviour.

There have been very few studies of brain size and encephalization in cetaceans and essentially none that have made direct quantitative comparisons of cetaceans and another mammalian group using large normative samples. In the present study two different measures of encephalization were calculated and used to rank and compare 21 odontocete species and 60 anthropoid primate species. Comparisons were made both within and between the two groups. Results show that the encephalization level of Homo sapiens is still extraordinary relative to that of nonhuman species. Nevertheless, a subset of delphinid odontocetes are significantly more highly encephalized than the most highly encephalized anthropoid primates and narrow the gap in encephalization between humans and nonhumans substantially. These findings may have implications for comparative models of the relative importance of brain size versus brain organization for the evolution of intelligence.

Confirmation of the existence of life on Mars would mean that life has independently evolved on two planets in one solar system and is not a highly improbable event. This would carry the implication that the Universe teems with life -- much of it billions of years older than life on the earth. What is the chance that this life is intelligent? Some prominent evolutionists (e.g., Mayr, Simpson) consider humankind to be a fluke and the prospects for extraterrestrial intelligence to be essentially zero, but their reasoning can be criticized. If the evolution of intelligence is indeed a relatively common occurrence, where do we stand in relation to this cosmic community of intelligent beings? The history of life on the earth combined with numbers from astronomy suggests intriguing answers.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Traditional analyses of the evolution of intelligence have emphasized commonality and continuity among species. However, recent research suggests that humans might have specialized in a particular kind of intelligence that is related to understanding mental states such as desires, intentions and beliefs. Data indicate that the ability to reflect on one's own mental states, as well as those of others, might be the result of evolutionary changes in the prefrontal cortex. Behavioral studies in children and chimpanzees reveal both similarities and striking differences in the developmental pathways that lead to theory-of-mind capacities. Humans and great apes share many ancient patterns of social behavior, but it is too early to be certain if they interpret them in the same manner. Humans might have evolved a cognitive specialization in theory of mind, forever altering their view of the social universe.

Humans use theory of mind when predicting the thoughts and feelings and actions of others. There is accumulating evidence that cooperation with a computerized game correlates with a unique pattern of brain activation. To investigate the neural correlates of cooperation in real-time we conducted an fMRI hyperscanning study. We hypothesized that real-time cooperation to complete a maze task, using a blind-driving paradigm, would activate substrates implicated in theory of mind. We also hypothesized that cooperation would activate neural reward centers more than when participants completed the maze themselves. Of interest and in support of our hypothesis we found left caudate and putamen activation when participants worked together to complete the maze. This suggests that cooperation during task completion is inherently rewarding. This finding represents one of the first discoveries of a proximate neural mechanism for group based interactions in real-time, which indirectly supports the social brain hypothesis.

In this article the editor discusses a General Excellence award given to "Scientific American," in the category of "Finance, Technology, and Lifestyle Magazines," from the American Society of Magazine Editors and various reports within the issue on topics including the evolution of the human brain, malaria prevention, and global warming.

According to Darwin's theory of sexual selection some features that differentiate the two sexes evolve by a process of "male competition" and "female choice". The sex difference in age of onset of psychotic illness in man may relate to a sexual dimorphism in cerebral organisation (the male brain being more lateralised or asymmetrical than the female brain), a difference consistent with a role for sexual selection in the evolution of the human brain. Differing criteria (reflected in a cross-culturally stable difference in mean age at marriage) in males and females for selecting personality characteristics in a mate may generate diversity in the balance of growth between the hemispheres, and this could maintain the high and relatively constant rates of psychosis in human populations.