The evolutionary origins of the Global Neuronal Workspace in vertebrates.

The Global Neuronal Workspace theory of consciousness offers an explicit functional architecture that relates consciousness to cognitive abilities such as perception, attention, memory, and evaluation. We show that the functional architecture of the Global Neuronal Workspace, which is based mainly on human studies, corresponds to the cognitive-affective architecture proposed by the Unlimited Associative Learning theory that describes minimal consciousness. However, we suggest that when applied to basal vertebrates, both models require important modifications to accommodate what has been learned about the evolution of the vertebrate brain. Most importantly, comparative studies suggest that in basal vertebrates, the Global Neuronal Workspace is instantiated by the event memory system found in the hippocampal homolog. This proposal has testable predictions and implications for understanding hippocampal and cortical functions, the evolutionary relations between memory and consciousness, and the evolution of unified perception.

Numbers don't speak for themselves: strategies of using numbers in public policy discourse.

In mathematics education, there is general agreement regarding the significance of mathematical literacy (also quantitative literacy or numeracy) for informed citizenship, which often requires evaluating the use of numbers in public policy discourse. We hold that such an evaluation must accommodate the necessarily fragile relation between the information that numbers are taken to carry and the policy decisions they are meant to support. In doing so, attention needs to be paid to differences in how that relation is formed. With this in mind, we investigated a public discourse that heavily relied on numbers in the context of introducing, maintaining, and easing the rules and regulations directed to contain the spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2 during the first epidemic wave of COVID-19 in Germany with its peak in early April 2020. We used a public-service broadcasting outlet as data. Our theoretical stance is affiliated with post-structuralist discourse theory. As an outcome, we identified four major related strategies of using numbers, which we named rationalisation, contrast, association and recharging. In our view explicit attention to these strategies as well as identifying new ones can aid the task of furthering critical mathematical literacy.

Evolutionary transitions in learning and cognition.

We define a cognitive system as a system that can learn, and adopt an evolutionary-transition-oriented framework for analysing different types of neural cognition. This enables us to classify types of cognition and point to the continuities and discontinuities among them. The framework we use for studying evolutionary transitions in learning capacities focuses on qualitative changes in the integration, storage and use of neurally processed information. Although there are always grey areas around evolutionary transitions, we recognize five major neural transitions, the first two of which involve animals at the base of the phylogenetic tree: (i) the evolutionary transition from learning in non-neural animals to learning in the first neural animals; (ii) the transition to animals showing limited, elemental associative learning, entailing neural centralization and primary brain differentiation; (iii) the transition to animals capable of unlimited associative learning, which, on our account, constitutes sentience and entails hierarchical brain organization and dedicated memory and value networks; (iv) the transition to imaginative animals that can plan and learn through selection among virtual events; and (v) the transition to human symbol-based cognition and cultural learning. The focus on learning provides a unifying framework for experimental and theoretical studies of cognition in the living world. This article is part of the theme issue 'Basal cognition: multicellularity, neurons and the cognitive lens'.

Human Social Evolution: Self-Domestication or Self-Control?

The self-domestication hypothesis suggests that, like mammalian domesticates, humans have gone through a process of selection against aggression - a process that in the case of humans was self-induced. Here, we extend previous proposals and suggest that what underlies human social evolution is selection for socially mediated emotional control and plasticity. In the first part of the paper we highlight general features of human social evolution, which, we argue, is more similar to that of other social mammals than to that of mammalian domesticates and is therefore incompatible with the notion of human self-domestication. In the second part, we discuss the unique aspects of human evolution and propose that emotional control and social motivation in humans evolved during two major, partially overlapping stages. The first stage, which followed the emergence of mimetic communication, the beginnings of musical engagement, and mimesis-related cognition, required socially mediated emotional plasticity and was accompanied by new social emotions. The second stage followed the emergence of language, when individuals began to instruct the imagination of their interlocutors, and to rely even more extensively on emotional plasticity and culturally learned emotional control. This account further illustrates the significant differences between humans and domesticates, thus challenging the notion of human self-domestication.

Unlimited Associative Learning and the origins of consciousness: a primer and some predictions.

Over the past two decades, Ginsburg and Jablonka have developed a novel approach to studying the evolutionary origins of consciousness: the Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) framework. The central idea is that there is a distinctive type of learning that can serve as a transition marker for the evolutionary transition from non-conscious to conscious life. The goal of this paper is to stimulate discussion of the framework by providing a primer on its key claims (Part I) and a clear statement of its main empirical predictions (Part II).

Cognitive gadgets and genetic accommodation.

Heyes argues that human metacognitive strategies (cognitive gadgets) evolved through cultural rather than genetic evolution. Although we agree that increased plasticity is the hallmark of human metacognition, we suggest cognitive malleability required the genetic accommodation of gadget-specific processes that enhanced the overall cognitive flexibility of humans.

The evolutionary implications of epigenetic inheritance.

The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (MS) forged in the mid-twentieth century was built on a notion of heredity that excluded soft inheritance, the inheritance of the effects of developmental modifications. However, the discovery of molecular mechanisms that generate random and developmentally induced epigenetic variations is leading to a broadening of the notion of biological heredity that has consequences for ideas about evolution. After presenting some old challenges to the MS that were raised, among others, by Karl Popper, I discuss recent research on epigenetic inheritance, which provides experimental and theoretical support for these challenges. There is now good evidence that epigenetic inheritance is ubiquitous and is involved in adaptive evolution and macroevolution. I argue that the many evolutionary consequences of epigenetic inheritance open up new research areas and require the extension of the evolutionary synthesis beyond the current neo-Darwinian model.

Why the missing heritability might not be in the DNA.

There are four major hypotheses (H1, H2, H3, and H4) as to the source of missing heritability. We propose that estimates obtained from GWAS underestimate heritability by not taking into account non-DNA (epigenetic) sources of heritability. Taking those factors into account (H4) should result in increased heritability estimates.

The Transition to Minimal Consciousness through the Evolution of Associative Learning.

The minimal state of consciousness is sentience. This includes any phenomenal sensory experience - exteroceptive, such as vision and olfaction; interoceptive, such as pain and hunger; or proprioceptive, such as the sense of bodily position and movement. We propose unlimited associative learning (UAL) as the marker of the evolutionary transition to minimal consciousness (or sentience), its phylogenetically earliest sustainable manifestation and the driver of its evolution. We define and describe UAL at the behavioral and functional level and argue that the structural-anatomical implementations of this mode of learning in different taxa entail subjective feelings (sentience). We end with a discussion of the implications of our proposal for the distribution of consciousness in the animal kingdom, suggesting testable predictions, and revisiting the ongoing debate about the function of minimal consciousness in light of our approach.

The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions.

Scientific activities take place within the structured sets of ideas and assumptions that define a field and its practices. The conceptual framework of evolutionary biology emerged with the Modern Synthesis in the early twentieth century and has since expanded into a highly successful research program to explore the processes of diversification and adaptation. Nonetheless, the ability of that framework satisfactorily to accommodate the rapid advances in developmental biology, genomics and ecology has been questioned. We review some of these arguments, focusing on literatures (evo-devo, developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction) whose implications for evolution can be interpreted in two ways­one that preserves the internal structure of contemporary evolutionary theory and one that points towards an alternative conceptual framework. The latter, which we label the 'extended evolutionary synthesis' (EES), retains the fundaments of evolutionary theory, but differs in its emphasis on the role of constructive processes in development and evolution, and reciprocal portrayals of causation. In the EES, developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism-environment complementarity. We spell out the structure, core assumptions and novel predictions of the EES, and show how it can be deployed to stimulate and advance research in those fields that study or use evolutionary biology.

The inheritance of acquired epigenetic variations.

There is evidence that the functional history of a gene in one generation can influence its expression in the next. In somatic cells, changes in gene activity are frequently associated with changes in the pattern of methylation of the cytosines in DNA; these methylation patterns are stably inherited. Recent work suggests that information about patterns of methylation and other epigenetic states can also be transmitted from parents to offspring. This evidence is the basis of a model for the inheritance of acquired epigenetic variations. According to the model, an environmental stimulus can induce heritable chromatin modifications which are very specific and predictable, and might result in an adaptive response to the stimulus. This type of response probably has most significance for adaptive evolution in organisms such as fungi and plants, which lack distinct segregation of the soma and germ line. However, in all organisms, the accumulation of specific and random chromatin modifications in the germ line may be important in speciation, because these modifications could lead to reproductive isolation between populations. Heritable chromatin variations may also alter the frequency and distribution of classical mutations and meiotic recombination. Therefore, inherited epigenetic changes in the structure of chromatin can influence neo-Darwinian evolution as well as cause a type of "Lamarckian" inheritance.

The teleological transitions in evolution: A Gántian view.

We discuss Gánti's approach to the study of minimal living organization, and suggest that his methodology can be applied to the study of the two other major teleological systems described by Aristotle: minimal consciousness (sentience, experiencing) and rationality. We start by outlining Gánti's strategy for the case of life: listing the basic characteristics that any living system capable of open-ended evolution must satisfy, developing a dynamic model that instantiates these characteristics (the chemoton), and identifying a capacity of the system (unlimited heredity) that allows the system to dynamically persist over evolutionary time and to be used as a marker of the evolutionary transition to life. We apply Gánti's explanatory strategy to the evolutionary transition to minimal consciousness, suggest a transition marker (unlimited associative learning) and discuss the wider evolutionary and philosophical implications of this approach.

Shaping the learning curve: epigenetic dynamics in neural plasticity.

A key characteristic of learning and neural plasticity is state-dependent acquisition dynamics reflected by the non-linear learning curve that links increase in learning with practice. Here we propose that the manner by which epigenetic states of individual cells change during learning contributes to the shape of the neural and behavioral learning curve. We base our suggestion on recent studies showing that epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone acetylation, and RNA-mediated gene regulation are intimately involved in the establishment and maintenance of long-term neural plasticity, reflecting specific learning-histories and influencing future learning. Our model, which is the first to suggest a dynamic molecular account of the shape of the learning curve, leads to several testable predictions regarding the link between epigenetic dynamics at the promoter, gene-network, and neural-network levels. This perspective opens up new avenues for therapeutic interventions in neurological pathologies.

Epigenetic inheritance and plasticity: The responsive germline.

Developmental plasticity, the capacity of a single genotype to give rise to different phenotypes, affects evolutionary dynamics by influencing the rate and direction of phenotypic change. It is based on regulatory changes in gene expression and gene products, which are partially controlled by epigenetic mechanisms. Plasticity involves not just epigenetic changes in somatic cells and tissues; it can also involve changes in germline cells. Germline epigenetic plasticity increases evolvability, the capacity to generate heritable, selectable, phenotypic variations, including variations that lead to novel functions. I discuss studies that show that some complex adaptive responses to new challenges are mediated by germline epigenetic processes, which can be transmitted over variable number of generations, and argue that the heritable variations that are generated epigenetically have an impact on both small-scale and large-scale aspects of evolution. First, I review some recent ecological studies and models that show that germline (gametic) epigenetic inheritance can lead to cumulative micro-evolutionary changes that are rapid and semi-directional. I suggest that "priming" and "epigenetic learning" may be of special importance in generating heritable, fine-tuned adaptive responses in populations. Second, I consider work showing how genomic and environmental stresses can also lead to epigenome repatterning, and produce changes that are saltational.