Age-related characteristics of the formation of neurophysiological mechanisms of the phonemic, grammatical, and semantic linguistic levels

The structure of regional interactions of brain bioelectric potentials has been studied during performance by adults (n = 18) and children aged five to six (n = 15) and eight to nine years (n = 17) of three analytical verbal tasks: recognition of a given phoneme in the context of auditory presented words and recognition of grammatical and semantic mistakes in auditory presented sentences. According to the data of cross-correlation and coherent EEG analyses, adults and, to a lesser extent, children of both age groups showed a noticeable intensification of interhemispheric interaction during the performance of all three tasks, especially between temporal areas, with relatively minor changes in ipsilateral EEG relations. Children were shown to have elements of immaturity of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying various aspects of the language function, such as the analysis of the grammatical formation of a verbal utterance and the semantic content of a phrase. The results also suggest that the level of maturation of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying phonemic analysis is somewhat higher at these age stages than the level of maturity of central mechanisms responsible for the analysis of the semantic content and grammatical construction of a phrase. Quantitative comparison of the patterns of spatial interaction of cortical bioelectric potentials recorded during the performance of the tasks related to different linguistic levels showed a high degree of their statistical similarity for each of the age groups. The findings confirm the assumption that the distributive central maintenance of different linguistic levels is based on topologically close constellations of interacting cortical areas and on similar organization of their regional interactions.     

Darwin in mind: new opportunities for evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) views the human mind as organized into many modules, each underpinned by psychological adaptations designed to solve problems faced by our Pleistocene ancestors. We argue that the key tenets of the established EP paradigm require modification in the light of recent findings from a number of disciplines, including human genetics, evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and paleoecology. For instance, many human genes have been subject to recent selective sweeps; humans play an active, constructive role in co-directing their own development and evolution; and experimental evidence often favours a general process, rather than a modular account, of cognition. A redefined EP could use the theoretical insights of modern evolutionary biology as a rich source of hypotheses concerning the human mind, and could exploit novel methods from a variety of adjacent research fields.     

Autopoiesis, Life, Mind and Cognition: Bases for a Proper Naturalistic Continuity

The strong version of the life-mind continuity thesis claims that mind can be understood as an enriched version of the same functional and organizational properties of life. Contrary to this view, in this paper I argue that mental phenomena offer distinctive properties, such as intentionality or representational content, that have no counterpart in the phenomenon of life, and that must be explained by appealing to a different level of functional and organizational principles. As a strategy, and following Maturana’s autopoietic theory of cognition, I introduce a conceptual distinction between mind and cognition. I argue that cognition corresponds to the natural behaviour that every living being exhibits in the realization of its existence, and that, viewed in that way, cognition is a dynamic process of structural coupling that, unlike mental phenomena, involves no representational contents. On the basis of this distinction, I try to show that while life suffices for cognition, it does not suffice for mind. That is, that the strong continuity is not between life and mind but between life and cognition.     

CNTNAP2 and Language Processing in Healthy Individuals as Measured with ERPs

The genetic FOXP2-CNTNAP2 pathway has been shown to be involved in the language capacity. We investigated whether a common variant of CNTNAP2 (rs7794745) is relevant for syntactic and semantic processing in the general population by using a visual sentence processing paradigm while recording ERPs in 49 healthy adults. While both AA homozygotes and T-carriers showed a standard N400 effect to semantic anomalies, the response to subject-verb agreement violations differed across genotype groups. T-carriers displayed an anterior negativity preceding the P600 effect, whereas for the AA group only a P600 effect was observed. These results provide another piece of evidence that the neuronal architecture of the human faculty of language is shaped differently by effects that are genetically determined.     

Meaning in Nature: Organic Manufacture?

The paper examines Marcello Barbieri’s (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. Highlighting debate within the biosemiotic community, it focuses on what the volume offers to those who explain human intellect in relation to what Turing called our ‘physical powers.’ In scrutinising the basis of world-modelling, parallels and contrasts are drawn with other work on embodied-embedded cognition. Models dominate biology. Is this a qualitative fact or does it point to biomechanisms? In evaluating the 18 contributions, it is suggested that the answers will shape the field. First, they will decide if biochemistry and explanatory reduction can be synergised by biosemantics. Second, they will show if our intellectual powers arise from biology. Does thinking use—not a language faculty—but what Marko? and colleagues call semiosis by the living? Resolution of such issues, it is suggested, can change how we view cognition. Above all, if the biomechanists win the day, cultural models can be regarded as extending natural meaning. On such a view, biomechanisms prompt us to act and perceive as we model our own natural models. This fits Craik’s vision: intellect gives us the alphanumerical ‘symbols’ that allow thoughts to have objective validity. For the biomechanist, this is explained—not by brains alone—but, rather, by acting under the constraints of historically extended sensoria.     

Biosymbols: Symbols in Life and Mind

The strong continuity thesis postulates that the properties of mind are an enriched version of the properties of life, and thus that life and mind differ in degree and not kind. A philosophical problem for this view is the ostensive discontinuity between humans and other animals in virtue of our use of symbols—particularly the presumption that the symbolic nature of human cognition bears no relation to the basic properties of life. In this paper, we make the case that a genuine account of strong continuity requires the identification of some sort of correlate of symbol-use in basic life properties. Our strategy is three-fold: 1) we argue that examples of proto-symbolism in simple living systems would be consistent with an evolutionary trajectory that ultimately produced symbolic cognition in humans; 2) we introduce Gordon Tomkins’ biological notion of ‘symbol’ as something that represents to the organism a feature of its environment that is significant to its survival; and 3) we employ this biological understanding of symbol-use to suggest that the symbolic nature of human cognition can be understood as an enriched version of the basic symbolic properties of life, thus preserving life-mind continuity in this context.     

Specifically Human: Going Beyond Perceptual Syntax

The aim of this paper is to help refine the definition of humans as “linguistic animals” in light of a comparative approach on nonhuman animals’ cognitive systems. As Uexküll & Kriszat (1934/1992) have theorized, the epistemic access to each species-specific environment (Umwelt) is driven by different biocognitive processes. Within this conceptual framework, I identify the salient cognitive process that distinguishes each species typical perception of the world as the faculty of language meant in the following operational definition: the ability to connect different elements according to structural rules. In order to draw some conclusions about humans’ specific faculty of language, I review different empirical studies on nonhuman animals’ ability to recognize formal patterns of tokens. I suggest that what differentiates human language from other animals’ cognitive systems is the ability to categorize the units of a pattern, going beyond its perceptual aspects. In fact, humans are the only species known to be able to combine semantic units within a network of combinatorial logical relationships (Deacon 1997) that can be linked to the state of affairs in the external world (Wittgenstein 1922). I assume that this ability is the core cognitive process underlying a) the capacity to speak (or to reason) in verbal propositions and b) the general human faculty of language expressed, for instance, in the ability to draw visual conceptual maps or to compute mathematical expressions. In light of these considerations, I conclude providing some research questions that could lead to a more detailed comparative exploration of the faculty of language.     

From the Hiatus Model to the Diffuse Discontinuities: A Turning Point in Human-Animal Studies

In twentieth-century continental philosophy, German philosophical anthropology (Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen) can be seen as a sort of conceptual laboratory devoted to human/animal research, and, in particular, to the discontinuity between human and non-human animals. Its main notion—the idea of the special position of humans in nature—is one of the first philosophical attempts to think of the specificity of humans as a natural and qualitative difference from non-human animals. This school of thought correctly rejects both the metaphysical and/or religious characterisations of humans, and the positivistic gradualism, that sees the human being as an animal endowed with a greater degree of certain faculties (intelligence, etc.). At the same time, German philosophical anthropology still takes it for granted that such natural-qualitative novelty is unique in the realm of the living, that in correspondence with humans there is the hiatus, the discontinuity par excellence. The semiotic side of this view is the distinction between signs and symbols developed by Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer: animal signs would be mere proxies for perceptive elements or stimuli, whereas only human symbols could convey complex representation of objects and situations. The goal of this contribution is to criticise the alleged uniqueness of the hiatus and its semiotic implications through the opposite approach of the diffuse discontinuities. This approach that focuses on the semiotic traits of different species-specific environments (Umwelten) can be traced back to Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiotical phenomenology, which thinks of discontinuities as a normal phenomenon of animal life.     

The Celtic fringe of Britain: insights from small mammal phylogeography

Recent genetic studies have challenged the traditional view that the ancestors of British Celtic people spread from central Europe during the Iron Age and have suggested a much earlier origin for them as part of the human recolonization of Britain at the end of the last glaciation. Here we propose that small mammals provide an analogue to help resolve this controversy. Previous studies have shown that common shrews (Sorex araneus) with particular chromosomal characteristics and water voles (Arvicola terrestris) of a specific mitochondrial (mt) DNA lineage have peripheral western/northern distributions with striking similarities to that of Celtic people. We show that mtDNA lineages of three other small mammal species (bank vole Myodes glareolus, field vole Microtus agrestis and pygmy shrew Sorex minutus) also form a ‘Celtic fringe’. We argue that these small mammals most reasonably colonized Britain in a two-phase process following the last glacial maximum (LGM), with climatically driven partial replacement of the first colonists by the second colonists, leaving a peripheral geographical distribution for the first colonists. We suggest that these natural Celtic fringes provide insight into the same phenomenon in humans and support its origin in processes following the end of the LGM.     

Adaptation to hard-object feeding in sea otters and hominins

The large, bunodont postcanine teeth in living sea otters (Enhydra lutris) have been likened to those of certain fossil hominins, particularly the ’robust’ australopiths (genus Paranthropus). We examine this evolutionary convergence by conducting fracture experiments on extracted molar teeth of sea otters and modern humans (Homo sapiens) to determine how load-bearing capacity relates to tooth morphology and enamel material properties. In situ optical microscopy and x-ray imaging during simulated occlusal loading reveal the nature of the fracture patterns. Explicit fracture relations are used to analyze the data and to extrapolate the results from humans to earlier hominins. It is shown that the molar teeth of sea otters have considerably thinner enamel than those of humans, making sea otter molars more susceptible to certain kinds of fractures. At the same time, the base diameter of sea otter first molars is larger, diminishing the fracture susceptibility in a compensatory manner. We also conduct nanoindentation tests to map out elastic modulus and hardness of sea otter and human molars through a section thickness, and microindentation tests to measure toughness. We find that while sea otter enamel is just as stiff elastically as human enamel, it is a little softer and tougher. The role of these material factors in the capacity of dentition to resist fracture and deformation is considered. From such comparisons, we argue that early hominin species like Paranthropus most likely consumed hard food objects with substantially higher biting forces than those exerted by modern humans.     

The evolution of theory of mind on welfare tradeoff ratios

People seem to attribute beliefs and desires to another person when interacting with them. Such a “theory of mind” capacity is essential for complex and uniquely human behavior such as language, but its evolutionary origin remains elusive. Using the formal tools of evolutionary game theory, we asked what environmental properties are necessary to select for a basic form of theory of mind—the ability to infer the prosociality, quantified by the welfare tradeoff ratio, of another person toward oneself. We found that none of the environments studied in classical or evolutionary game theory give an advantage to this form of theory of mind capacities; theory of mind is advantageous only in a new class of environments with stable opponents and variable payoff structures. In two behavioral experiments (n = 91) we verified that people can, and do use theory of mind in such an environment. These results suggest that some features of early humans’ social environment that were previously neglected in evolutionary game theory may be responsible for the evolution of people’s complex social capacities.     

Leges sine moribus vanae: does language make moral thinking possible?

Does language make moral cognition possible? Some authors like Andy Clark have argued for a positive answer whereby language and the ways people use it mark a fundamental divide between humans and all other animals with respect to moral thinking (Clark, Mind and morals: essays on cognitive science and ethics. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000a; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000b; Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 37–43 and discussion, 44–61, 2002). I take issue with Clark’s view and argue that language is probably unnecessary for the emergence of moral cognition. I acknowledge, however, that humans unlike other animals seem to posses what Haugeland in Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002) terms ‘norm-hungriness’: an idiosyncratic need or desire to create and abide by a multitude of norms. Our peculiar norm-hungriness, I suggest, depends on what can be called florid control rather than on language.     

Fiat or Bona Fide Boundary—A Matter of Granular Perspective

Background

Distinguishing bona fide (i.e. natural) and fiat (i.e. artificial) physical boundaries plays a key role for distinguishing natural from artificial material entities and is thus relevant to any scientific formal foundational top-level ontology, as for instance the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). In BFO, the distinction is essential for demarcating two foundational categories of material entity: object and fiat object part. The commonly used basis for demarcating bona fide from fiat boundary refers to two criteria: (i) intrinsic qualities of the boundary bearers (i.e. spatial/physical discontinuity, qualitative heterogeneity) and (ii) mind-independent existence of the boundary. The resulting distinction of bona fide and fiat boundaries is considered to be categorial and exhaustive.

Methodology/Principal Findings

By referring to various examples from biology, we demonstrate that the hitherto used distinction of boundaries is not categorial: (i) spatial/physical discontinuity is a matter of scale and the differentiation of bona fide and fiat boundaries is thus granularity-dependent, and (ii) this differentiation is not absolute, but comes in degrees. By reducing the demarcation criteria to mind-independence and by also considering dispositions and historical relations of the bearers of boundaries, instead of only considering their spatio-structural properties, we demonstrate with various examples that spatio-structurally fiat boundaries can nevertheless be mind-independent and in this sense bona fide.

Conclusions/Significance

We argue that the ontological status of a given boundary is perspective-dependent and that the strictly spatio-structural demarcation criteria follow a static perspective that is ignorant of causality and the dynamics of reality. Based on a distinction of several ontologically independent perspectives, we suggest different types of boundaries and corresponding material entities, including boundaries based on function (locomotion, physiology, ecology, development, reproduction) and common history (development, heredity, evolution). We argue that for each perspective one can differentiate respective bona fide from fiat boundaries.     

Self domestication and the evolution of language

We set out an account of how self-domestication plays a crucial role in the evolution of language. In doing so, we focus on the growing body of work that treats language structure as emerging from the process of cultural transmission. We argue that a full recognition of the importance of cultural transmission fundamentally changes the kind of questions we should be asking regarding the biological basis of language structure. If we think of language structure as reflecting an accumulated set of changes in our genome, then we might ask something like, “What are the genetic bases of language structure and why were they selected?” However, if cultural evolution can account for language structure, then this question no longer applies. Instead, we face the task of accounting for the origin of the traits that enabled that process of structure-creating cultural evolution to get started in the first place. In light of work on cultural evolution, then, the new question for biological evolution becomes, “How did those precursor traits evolve?” We identify two key precursor traits: (1) the transmission of the communication system through learning; and (2) the ability to infer the communicative intent associated with a signal or action. We then describe two comparative case studies—the Bengalese finch and the domestic dog—in which parallel traits can be seen emerging following domestication. Finally, we turn to the role of domestication in human evolution. We argue that the cultural evolution of language structure has its origin in an earlier process of self-domestication.     

Anthropomorphism,anthropectomy, and the null hypothesis

We examine the claim that the methodology of psychology leads to a bias in animal cognition research against attributing “anthropomorphic” properties to animals (Sober in Thinking with animals: new perspectives on anthropomorphism. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 85–99, 2005; de Waal in Philos Top 27:225–280, 1999). This charge is examined in light of a debate on the role of folk psychology between primatologists who emphasize similarities between humans and other apes, and those who emphasize differences. We argue that while in practice there is sometimes bias, either in the formulation of the null hypothesis or in the preference of Type-II errors over Type-I errors, the bias is not the result of proper use of the Neyman and Pearson hypothesis testing method. Psychologists’ preference for false negatives over false positives cannot justify a preference for avoiding anthropomorphic errors over anthropectic (Gk. anthropos—human; ektomia—to cut out) errors.     

The Hypothesis of a Genetic Protolanguage: an Epistemological Investigation

Progress in molecular biology has revealed profound relations between linguistic and genomic sciences, mainly through advances in bioinformatics. The structural symmetries between biochemical and verbal syntaxes raise the question of their origins: did they emerge independently, or did one arise from the other? Does the genetic code contain the traces of a protolanguage, a universal grammar whose gradual evolution and successive mutations progressively led to the polymorphism of natural languages? To explore this question, we review the isomorphism of the genetic code and verbal codes from lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic standpoints. We discuss the limits of these symmetries and their anthropomorphic connotations. We observe the gradual evolution of species and languages according to parallel mechanisms, and the genetic roots of the physiology of language. In conclusion, we hypothesize that human observers may not be projecting linguistic frameworks onto genomic structures. Rather, it could be their linguistic faculties that reflect the grammatical structure of genetic code.     

Evolution,revolution or saltation scenario for the emergence of modern cultures?

Crucial questions in the debate on the origin of quintessential human behaviours are whether modern cognition and associated innovations are unique to our species and whether they emerged abruptly, gradually or as the result of a discontinuous process. Three scenarios have been proposed to account for the origin of cultural modernity. The first argues that modern cognition is unique to our species and the consequence of a genetic mutation that took place approximately 50 ka in Africa among already evolved anatomically modern humans. The second posits that cultural modernity emerged gradually in Africa starting at least 200 ka in concert with the origin of our species on that continent. The third states that innovations indicative of modern cognition are not restricted to our species and appear and disappear in Africa and Eurasia between 200 and 40 ka before becoming fully consolidated. We evaluate these scenarios in the light of new evidence from Africa, Asia and Europe and explore the mechanisms that may have led to modern cultures. Such reflections will demonstrate the need for further inquiry into the relationship between climate and demographic/cultural change in order to better understand the mechanisms of cultural transmission at work in Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens populations.     

Selenium is involved in the negative regulation of the expression of selenium-free [NiFe] hydrogenases in Methanococcus voltae

Attempts to solve the fundamental questions regarding the descent of man are dogged by superstitions and unexamined orthodoxies. The origin of humans, established a decade ago based upon cytological analysis of ape chromosomes, continues to be called into question. Although molecular methods have provided a framework for tracing the paths of human evolution, conclusive evidence remains elusive. We have used a single ABL gene probe derived from human chromosome 9 to assess the direction of change in the equivalent ape chromosomes. This approach has resulted in a few surprises which again challenge the prevailing view of early primate evolution based solely on chromosome banding patterns. The ABL protooncogene is present on human chromosome 9 at band q34. Similar DNA sequences presumed to represent an ABL gene, are present on chromosome 11 in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) but at a different relative location, indicating that the mechanism of the origin of human chromosome 9 is far more complex than has previously been suggested. Nevertheless, in gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), the equivalent to human chromosome band 9 q34 is apparently located on chromosome 13 at a putative telomeric position and no discernible differences could be established. Despite the presence of the ABL protooncogene on human equivalent ape chromosomes, molecular systematics will continue to generate enigmas in the evolutionary context until the entire genome is sequenced.     

Semantic associations between signs and numerical categories in the prefrontal cortex

The utilization of symbols such as words and numbers as mental tools endows humans with unrivalled cognitive flexibility. In the number domain, a fundamental first step for the acquisition of numerical symbols is the semantic association of signs with cardinalities. We explored the primitives of such a semantic mapping process by recording single-cell activity in the monkey prefrontal and parietal cortices, brain structures critically involved in numerical cognition. Monkeys were trained to associate visual shapes with varying numbers of items in a matching task. After this long-term learning process, we found that the responses of many prefrontal neurons to the visual shapes reflected the associated numerical value in a behaviorally relevant way. In contrast, such association neurons were rarely found in the parietal lobe. These findings suggest a cardinal role of the prefrontal cortex in establishing semantic associations between signs and abstract categories, a cognitive precursor that may ultimately give rise to symbolic thinking in linguistic humans.     

From hominins to humans: how sapiens became behaviourally modern

This paper contributes to a debate in the palaeoarchaeological community about the major time-lag between the origin of anatomically modern humans and the appearance of typically human cultural behaviour. Why did humans take so long—at least 100 000 years—to become ‘behaviourally modern’? The transition is often explained as a change in the intrinsic cognitive competence of modern humans: often in terms of a new capacity for symbolic thought, or the final perfection of language. These cognitive breakthrough models are not satisfactory, for they fail to explain the uneven palaeoanthropological record of human competence. Many supposed signature capacities appear (and then disappear) before the supposed cognitive breakthrough; many of the signature capacities disappear again after the breakthrough. So, instead of seeing behavioural modernity as a simple reflection of a new kind of mind, this paper presents a niche construction conceptual model of behavioural modernity. Humans became behaviourally modern when they could reliably transmit accumulated informational capital to the next generation, and transmit it with sufficient precision for innovations to be preserved and accumulated. In turn, the reliable accumulation of culture depends on the construction of learning environments, not just intrinsic cognitive machinery. I argue that the model is (i) evolutionarily plausible: the elements of the model can be assembled incrementally, without implausible selective scenarios; (ii) the model coheres with the broad palaeoarchaeological record; (iii) the model is anthropologically and ethnographically plausible; and (iv) the model is testable, though only in coarse, preliminary ways.