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Cognitive Evolution
( Multi-disciplinary site for Neuroscience, Psychology, Biology, Anatomy, genetics, etc.)
Brain is the biological essence of the mind. Not long ago, heart was the center of the mind. When Egyptians mummified their dead preparing for the next world, they preserved the body, the heart and other organs, but not the brain, which was extracted through the nostrils and discarded. In recent years, efforts have been made to study the brain by different groups trained in disciplines such as evolutionary biology, neuroscience, genetics, psychology, behavior science and many other new fields. We now know that our brain is composed of cerebra, cerebellum, limbic system and brain stem. (Embryonic brain stem cell being use for scientific studies is the topic of controversy now-a-day.) Brain cells, an old term, are now known as neurons having connections in the form of dendrites and axons with neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, serotonin, forwarding messages through synapses; neurons also form networks to perform cognitive tasks; genes control the formations and operation of all living things through DNA, RNA, proteins, hormones, epigenetics, which impact our lives in heredity, moods, diseases, malfunctions, and many other happenings in our days.
All of the above organic entities are composed of chemicals, organic and inorganic. A virus is a long organic molecular but it has a life and can reproduce; so does single cell or complex living animal. We share genes with lowly fruitflies and also there are similarities in behaviors of human and other animals. Evolution plays a role in these phenomena. What is life or how complex chemical structures become living beings? How is the mind related to the brain? How these neurons, genes and etc cause mood swings? Since evolution effects the physiological developments of all living beings on earth, it is inevitable that evolution also impacts cognitive development. These are the questions worth pondering.
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Website
This website is designed for cross-fertilizing thoughts from scientists trained in different fields. It is intended for the exchange of ideas in the field relevant to the evolutionary process of cognition or mind. It is more like a think-tank where brainstorms are more important than peer critiques. Inputs from various fields such as anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, biology, anatomy, genetics, computer science, etc. are solicited. (My perspective is anthropology with emphasis upon evolution.)
To avoid overburdening this website, communication should be via postal mail or e-mail (no attachment,figure, graph, please), and the text should be limited to one page or about fifty lines with font/size of letters as Time New Roman /12, and, also, please supply the title, author’s name and mailing address. This limitation is not a disadvantage, since one could send a series of articles on the topic intended.
Although this website is constructed with specific goals in mind, each article, devoting to a topic or a subtopic, might be read individually as being independent from other articles or read seletively from the listing as an entity. The desired article in "Listing" can be found in the "Article" section designated by the same "number" in the bracket. I hope that the topics discussed in this webiste will be challenging and provocative to you. If you do not have a specific article of interest in mind, please refer to "Road Map" at the end of "Listing" for direction.
Adam Chou PhD
1058 Barley Sheaf Road, Flemington, N.J. 08822
e-mail adamlucinda@embarqmail.com
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My Thoughts
The evolutionary process of hominids has always been a topic of interest to me. My thoughts in my research and writing about it were initially interrupted by some obvious questions. Why the evolution of Homo erectus into Homo sapiens sapiens is such a controversial topic? Why the human evolution in Europe ended with the extinction of Neanderthal man? Later, these questions led to others. Why Homo sapiens is the only mammal to develop brain power and why others, such as apes, did not further their brain development? In nature, evolution is a process of survival of the fittest and there are constant competitions within a niche for survival. For example, ungulates developed fleeting feet in order to escape from the carnivores. Food chain of predator or prey is the order of the day. In the case of human, we have no predators to threaten our life since the days of Homo habilis with the discoveries of stone tools. We were further protected by the magic of fire from the days of Homo erectus. Therefore, there is really no need for the further development of our brainpower as none in the animal kingdom can compete against us. Lately, why Flores (revealed to the public in 2000s but was discovered earlier) are so small in stature but with a brain proportionate in size to us with our larger bodies? Since their stone tools are fashioned like ones done by the other stone age people in the region, are their intelligence equivalent to these stone age people or Homo sapiens sapiens? From these questions, I got to be involved, first, with the evolutionary process of hominids, which further led me to seek what is cognition.
Seeking answers to the above questions is not an easy matter. Only a few footprints were left by the evolutionary process of hominids. Besides some human fossils and stone artifacts, there is little trace of the evolution process as evidence leading from early man to modern man to assist us in improving our understanding of our evolutionary developments, especially cognition. One of the most significant finds, so far, is the Peking Man Cave which contains remains from intermittent human inhabitant for nearly half a million years. Unfortunately, since the days of its discovery, it has been in dispute. At present, we will seek answers to the above questions through a tortuous path of inferring deduction based on available information to seek guidelines in directing our further efforts. For example, we can observe the behavior of the lower animals and assess their intelligence to establish a base. The difference from this base to the human intelligence can safely be considered as the result of evolution. Or we can observe growing intelligence of infants as a start point of cognitive development. In addition, we can review our physical developments such as bipedalism, hand dexterity, vocal communication and other physical endowments to establish changes, which occurred through evolution. Mirror neurons have been found to be the linkage between perception and motor action. Recent experiment demonstrates that calls and alarms emitted by monkeys light up the Broca;s and Wenircke's areas where humans engage these areas as our language centers. From these data and hypothesis we can design a program for future research. We can also compare the structural logic of the system software residing in computer to provide some insights into the logic applied to the configurations of the neurons in our brain, knowing that our brain is far more sophisticated than a computer.
Since "developing mind" involves many fields, it is suggested here for one to view the "Listing" first for articles of interest instead of begining with the first article which might not be of your interest.
Adam Chou
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Background
I, with my background of a chemical engineer specialized in process control, regard the human body, in principle, like a chemical plant operated and controlled by a distributed computer system. Our brain is equivalent to the central computer of the distributed system; however the basic components of the brain and the computer are greatly different in configuration and performance. The computer is composed of on/off switches for coding messages while the brain consists of neurons involving different neurotransmitters at various transmitting rates and each neuron have hundreds and thousands of connections to other neurons. Our brain, no wonder, far exceeds the computer system in speed and capability.
This website contains materials, mostly, compiled and extracted from books and journals in the fields of anthropology, psychology, biology, zoology, neroscience, computer science, etc. to study the brain functions in terms of the neural networks. Periodicals used include Nature, Science, Science News and also for specific topics, references are compiled with the help of Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia. The names of the researchers and the associated organization are given for future reference. It is intended to discuss, by examples such topics as "Moving Objects", "Motherly Love", "Infant Development" in this website, the concept that our brain is composed of blocks of neural network, which I call BNN (Block of Neural Net). Some BNN are shared by all members of the animal kingdom and others evolved uniquely to reside with one or more species. Since BNN are firm-wired in a language or coding, which we still have no knowledge of, it is a mistake to assume that brain functions could be interpreted in terms of our concepts or feelings which we are familiar with. For example, many scientists try to identify the regions of the brain representing happy, sad, anger, etc.. We might find, in the future, that some areas of our brain are programmed with a group of BNN, depending upon the types of neurotransmitters or other mechanism, to yield opposite moods which we intuitively associate with; for example happiness and sadness are being produced by the same set of BNN. Based on this hypothesis, we can gain insights into the understanding of mental diseases, by considering that these disorders arise from the consequence of the communication system of the NBB system or some connections of the neurons within these NBB being modified by outside influences. At the same time, such change could be reversed by psychological or drug therapies to restore them to a normal state of operation.
Although this website is constructed with a specific goal in mind, each article is devoted to a topic or subtopic, which can be read individually as being independent from the other articles or read selectively from the listing as an entity. The bracketed number in-line with the author's name is the identification number of the item in the "Articles" section of this website. I hope that the topics discussed in this website will be challenging and provocative to you. Furthermore, it could be a fertile field for graduate students seeking research topics as subject of their thesis.
Adam Chou PhD
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