Teaching is an important process of cultural transmission. Some have argued that human teaching is a cognitive instinct - a form of 'natural cognition' centred on mindreading, shaped by genetic evolution for the education of juveniles, and with a normative developmental trajectory driven by the unfolding of a genetically inherited predisposition to teach. Here, we argue instead that human teaching is a culturally evolved trait that exhibits characteristics of a cognitive gadget.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNorms permeate human life. Most of people's activities can be characterized by rules about what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden-rules that are crucial in making people hyper-cooperative animals. In this article, I examine the current cognitive-evolutionary account of "norm psychology" and propose an alternative that is better supported by evidence and better placed to promote interdisciplinary dialogue.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDesmoid tumors (DT) are rare, locally aggressive, fibroblastic soft-tissue tumors that are characterized by infiltrative growth and can affect organs and adjacent structures, resulting in substantial clinical burden impacting patients' health-related quality of life. Searches of PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and key conferences were conducted in November 2021 and updated periodically through March 2023 to identify articles describing the burden of DT. Of 651 publications identified, 96 relevant ones were retained.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuantum dots (QDs) can be used as fluorescent probes in single molecule localization microscopy to achieve subdiffraction limit resolution (super-resolution fluorescence imaging). However, the toxicity of Cd in the prototypical CdSe-based QDs can limit their use in biological applications. Furthermore, commercial CdSe QDs are usually modified with relatively thick shells of both inorganic and organic materials to render them in the 10-20 nm size range, which is relatively large for biological labels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe novel multidomain protein, cpSRP43, is a unique subunit of the post-translational chloroplast signal recognition particle (cpSRP) targeting pathway in higher plants. The cpSRP pathway is responsible for targeting and insertion of light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding proteins (LHCPs) to the thylakoid membrane. Upon emergence into the stroma, LHCPs form a soluble transit complex with the cpSRP heterodimer, which is composed of cpSRP43 and cpSRP54.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGrossmann's impressive article indicates that - along with attentional biases, expansion of domain-general processes of learning and memory, and other temperamental tweaks - heightened fearfulness is part of the genetic starter kit for distinctively human minds. The learned matching account of emotional contagion explains how heightened fearfulness could have promoted the development of caring and cooperation in our species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In a phase 2 study, rucaparib, an inhibitor of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), showed a high level of activity in patients who had metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer associated with a deleterious alteration. Data are needed to confirm and expand on the findings of the phase 2 study.
Methods: In this randomized, controlled, phase 3 trial, we enrolled patients who had metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer with a , , or alteration and who had disease progression after treatment with a second-generation androgen-receptor pathway inhibitor (ARPI).
Episodic representations can be entertained either as "remembered" or "imagined"-as outcomes of experience or as simulations of such experience. Here, we argue that this feature is the product of a dedicated cognitive function: the metacognitive capacity to determine the of mental event simulations. We argue that mnemicity attribution should be distinguished from other metacognitive operations (such as reality monitoring) and propose that this attribution is a "cognitive gadget"-a distinctively human ability made possible by cultural learning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychon Bull Rev
August 2023
In a large variety of contexts, it is essential to use the available information to extract patterns and behave accordingly. When it comes to social interactions for instance, the information gathered about interaction partners across multiple encounters (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution has prompted a wide-ranging discussion with broadly three aims: to apply the theory to novel contexts; to extend the conceptual framework; to offer critical feedback on various aspects of the theory. We first discuss BST's relevance to the diverse range of topics which emerged from the commentaries, followed by a consideration of how our framework can be supplemented by and compared to other theories. Lastly, the criticisms that were raised by a subset of commentaries allow us to clarify parts of our theory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) is associated with malnutrition risk in hospitalised individuals. COVID-19 and malnutrition studies in large European cohorts are limited, and post-discharge dietary characteristics are understudied. This study aimed to assess the rates of and risk factors for ≥10% weight loss in inpatients with COVID-19, and the need for post-discharge dietetic support and the General Practitioner (GP) prescription of oral nutritional supplements, during the first COVID-19 wave in a large teaching hospital in the UK.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBehav Brain Sci
February 2022
Cultural evolution depends on both innovation (the creation of new cultural variants by accident or design) and high-fidelity transmission (which preserves our accumulated knowledge and allows the storage of normative conventions). What is required is an overarching theory encompassing both dimensions, specifying the psychological motivations and mechanisms involved. The bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution proposes that the co-existence of innovative change and stable tradition results from our ability to adopt different motivational stances flexibly during social learning and transmission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this My word, Press et al. tackle the 'theory crisis' in cognitive science. Using examples of good and not-so-good theoretical practice, they distinguish theories from effects, predictions, hypotheses, typologies, and frameworks in a self-help checklist of seven questions to guide theory construction, evaluation, and testing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman fibroblast growth factor-1 (hFGF1) binding to its receptor and heparin play critical roles in cell proliferation, angiogenesis and wound healing but is also implicated in cancer. Fluorescence imaging is a powerful approach to study such protein interactions, but it is not always obvious if the site chosen will be efficiently labeled, often relying on trial-and-error. To provide a more systematic approach towards an efficient site-specific labeling strategy, we labeled two structurally distinct regions of the protein - the flexible N-terminus and a rigid loop.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlbino3 (Alb3) is an integral membrane protein fundamental to the targeting and insertion of light-harvesting complex (LHC) proteins into the thylakoid membrane. Alb3 contains a stroma-exposed C-terminus (Alb3-Cterm) that is responsible for binding the LHC-loaded transit complex before LHC membrane insertion. Alb3-Cterm has been reported to be intrinsically disordered, but precise mechanistic details underlying how it recognizes and binds to the transit complex are lacking, and the functional roles of its four different motifs have been debated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTen years ago, published the Mirror Neuron Forum, in which authors debated the role of mirror neurons in action understanding, speech, imitation, and autism and asked whether mirror neurons are acquired through visual-motor learning. Subsequent research on these themes has made significant advances, which should encourage further, more systematic research. For action understanding, multivoxel pattern analysis, patient studies, and brain stimulation suggest that mirror-neuron brain areas contribute to low-level processing of observed actions (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhat makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved culturally. We present an evolutionary account that shows this hypothesis to be coherent, plausible, and worthy of further investigation. It has the following steps: (0) in common with other animals, early hominins had significant capacity for social learning; (1) knowledge and skills learned by offspring from their parents began to spread because bearers had more offspring, a process we call CS1 (or Cultural Selection 1); (2) CS1 shaped attentional learning biases; (3) these attentional biases were augmented by explicit learning biases (judgements about what should be copied from whom).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlobal solid biofuel stove emissions strongly impact air quality, climate change, and human health. However, investigations of the impacts of global solid biofuel stove emissions on human health associated with PM (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 μm) and ozone (O) are limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince antiquity, the term 'imitation' has been used promiscuously in biology and everyday life. Anything that makes some individuals look or act like others has been called imitation, from the evolutionary process that makes edible butterflies look like their inedible cousins (better known as Batesian mimicry), to the rag-bag of psychological processes that make people wear similar clothes, eat in the same restaurants, and use the same gestures for communication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIf you are not sure what 'culture' means, you are not alone. In 1952, anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn identified 164 definitions of culture and there has been growth rather than rationalisation in the ensuing 70 years. In everyday English, culture is the knowledge and behaviour that characterises a particular group of people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Baldwin effect is a hypothetical process in which a learned response to environmental change evolves a genetic basis. Modelling has shown that the Baldwin effect offers a plausible and elegant explanation for the emergence of complex behavioural traits, but there is little direct empirical evidence for its occurrence. We highlight experimental evidence of the Baldwin effect and argue that it acts preferentially on peripheral rather than on central cognitive processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci
October 2020
Over the last decades, energy and pollution control policies combined with structural changes in the economy decoupled emission trends from economic growth, increasingly also in the developing world. It is found that effective implementation of the presently decided national pollution control regulations should allow further economic growth without major deterioration of ambient air quality, but will not be enough to reduce pollution levels in many world regions. A combination of ambitious policies focusing on pollution controls, energy and climate, agricultural production systems and addressing human consumption habits could drastically improve air quality throughout the world.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBayesian brain theories suggest that perception, action and cognition arise as animals minimise the mismatch between their expectations and reality. This principle could unify cognitive science with the broader natural sciences, but leave key elements of cognition and behaviour unexplained.
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