Part 3 Consilience Conference 2012: A lowly graduate student's notes

These posts will not be in any discernible order; nor will they resemble the order of presentations during the conference. They will merely reflect what I found profoundly interesting and what presentations sparked future research endeavors. These thoughts will be poorly cited and eventually as time permits, I will fill in citations as I move along.

With that being said, if it seems as though I think my thoughts are original or of my own, when in fact someone already went there...it's not plagiarism. Its my daily life. Someone. Already. Did. It. In that case, comment with a citation or two.

 Michael Rose

Why did we become so smart?

One hypothesis is man as tool-user.
However, there is a huge diversity in tool use across the globe, and with each different environment, there should be varying degrees of intelligence.
Another hypothesis is man as a social being. 
 Our brain is lethal compared to built-in tools. This destabilized the game...And from it began a mental arms race. A free mental arms race.

So our brains serve as generalized calculators. However, fitness calculations are implicit. We don't consciously process our fitness on a day to day basis. This Darwinian brain, if you will, is hidden from our conscious awareness.

This is probably for our benefit, I mean, its hard enough to stop thinking about sex for 20 seconds....but to have it constantly on your brain, and not in the pleasurable way, but more the "baby factory" way....

So our brains have a system that regulates these Darwinian drives.

Now, I will not concur with Dr. Rose, in that this is "god" living inside our skulls. That is so unnecessary. I am completely convinced our cortex, specifically the prefrontal cortex is there to regulate. Its already been shown to regulate our behavior, our emotions, and it makes complete sense to say it regulates our Darwinian drives. Individuals with damage to certain prefrontal areas have an array of problems; from inability to plan ahead to engaging in odd sexual behaviors.

My first thought is, that no wonder anyone under 20-25 has extreme difficulties turning off their Darwinian drives...their regulators are not fully developed. This isn't to say they are consciously aware of their fitness, but rather, they are more vulnerable to the urges to survive and reproduce and reproduce and reproduce.

Dr. Rose continues to tell the age-old yarn about poor, old Phineas Gage. Iron shot straight through his brain, severing the link between his limbic system and regulating cortex. He soon was plagued with a terrible demeanor, inability to control his emotions, and (new to me) exhibited pseudopsychopathology. Gage seemed to lose control over his Darwinian brain and drives. So are adolescents just tiny Darwinian Psychopaths? (that would be quite the interesting study....)

So, without further ado, to Life History we go....

Do your life history strategies reside in your prefrontal cortex?!?

Someone who exhibits a fast, low K lifestyle, might have a smaller prefrontal cortex...
They lack the cognitive resources to regulate their Darwinian drives.
Someone who exhibits a slow, high K lifestyle might have a larger (normal) prefrontal cortex...
They have the cognitive resources to regulate these same drives.

Of course, correlational studies will be necessary to determine if individuals that have r/K strategies do indeed have lower PFC volume. But also, examining if damage to certain areas produce one strategy or the other, or if we are lucky enough, to have someone previously slow incur damage that sped up their strategy.

Now this will be revisited shortly. Please anxiously await my post based on Patricia Churchland's presentation.