Monthly archive for June 2008

New Findings on Deep Human History

Posted: June 13, 2008

On April 25, 2008, Science Daily published a report, “Early Populations Evolved Separately for 100,000 Years”, that added significant new findings to existing knowledge about Homo sapiens history prior to the migrations out of Africa starting around sixty thousand years ago. An international team of researchers has analyzed a sample of over 600 complete mitochondrial DNA genomes from populations across Africa. This analysis has found that early human populations in Africa were small and isolated from each other for many tens of thousands of years. This is important because the isolation of small populations is known to speed up the genetic evolutionary process. This finding, when combined with earlier ones, serves to provide more detail and reinforcement of the historical account of deep human history presented in Chapters 4 and 5 of Being Human.

In commenting on the study, Dr. Spencer Wells, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and Director of the Genographic Project, said:

This new study released today illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history. Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, Genographic Advisory Board member, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and Research Professor, Stony Brook University, added:

Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.

The time line of deep human history presented by the team of genographic researchers, led by Doron Behar, Genographic Associate Researcher, based at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY and Tel Aviv University, can be summarized as follows:

The researchers comment in the article on three critical changes in the behavior of H. sapiens that they hypothesize emerged particularly during the  period of group isolation:
1. Marked changes in the material culture.
2. Development of complex spoken language.
3. Development of abstract thought.

In terms of RD theory all three of these changes would be manifestations of the development of an independent drive to comprehend as discussed in  some detail in Chapter 4 of Being Human.

RD theory would also add that the separation and isolation of these environmentally stressed tribal groups would also be the conditions that would tend to induce tight bonding among all members of each tribal group and the related development of a moral sense, as hypothesized in Being Human in Chapter 5.

Tags: Deep Human History | 0 Comments »

Justice in the Brain: Equity and Efficiency Are Encoded Differently

Posted: June 10, 2008

A fascinating article with the title above appeared in a May 10, 2008 report in ScienceDaily. Researchers at the University of Illinois and CalTech led by Ming Hsu asked their subjects inside a fMRI brain scanning machine, “Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share?” The answers they got clearly bear on RD Theory.

The subjects were asked to make a series of tough decisions about how to allocate food donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage. The subjects were told that each child would start out with a monetary equivalent of 24 meals, an actual gift from the research team to the orphanage. Some meals would, however, have to be cut, that is ‘wasted’, from some children’s allotments. The number of meals wasted and the individual children who would be affected depended on how the subjects selected from trade-off options the researchers presented to them. Every decision option pitted efficiency (the total number of meals given as a proportion of the number originally available) against equity (how equally the burden of ‘wasted’ meals was shared among the children) and ranged from high efficiency with the burden of loss inequitably falling on only a few children, to high equity among children at the cost of more wastage. In RD terms this choice poses trade offs between the ‘waste not’ aspect of thedrive to acquire (dA) resources and the ‘ be fair’ code that goes with the drive to bond (dB). Photographs of the affected children accompanied each option. [This was an essential part of the experiment from our RD standpoint, since dB may well not really go into effect without a face-to-face view of the ‘other’]

The experimental results tend to confirm RD expectations by showing a balance in the subjects’ choices between the two polar opposites with a tilt toward equity. To cite the report, “In these trails, subjects overwhelmingly chose to preserve equity at the expense of efficiency,” Hsu said. “They were all quite inequity averse.”

Hsu further reported that the animation, in conjunction with the fMRI, allowed the researchers to view activity in the brain at critical moments in the decision-making process. After analyzing the data, they found that different brain regions — the insula, putamen and caudate — were activated differently, and at different points in the process. Initially they saw signals in the insula and the putamen. The putamen was responding only to the chosen efficiency, which was how many meals got wasted. The insula, however, responded to how equitably the burden of ‘wasted’ meals was distributed. At the end they saw the activation of the caudate. “The caudate appeared to integrate both equity and efficiency once a decision was made,” he commented.

Hsu explained that the involvement of the insula appears to support the notion that emotion plays a role in a person’s attitude towards inequity since the insula is implicated in the “the awareness of emotions” and the “mediation of fairness.” In terms of RD theory this sounds like the locus of skills that support the drive to bond (dB). While it is by no means clear, the involvement of the putamen regarding efficiency at least raises the question of whether the putamen (in the limbic area) is involved as a skill supporting the drive to acquire (dA). Finally, the activation of the caudate is frequently cited in neuroscience findings as the brain’s way of rewarding the execution of desired or ‘wanted’ behaviors, in this case perhaps the ‘wants’ of both dA and dB.

This fascinating experiment demonstrates how the ingenious experimental designs of cutting-edge neuroscientists and psychologists, using the latest in brain scanning equipment, can throw light on integrative theories, such as the Renewed Darwinian Theory of Behavior!

Tags: Drive to Acquire, Drive to Bond, Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior | 0 Comments »