The Cooking Ape: An Interview with Richard Wrangham

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
elisabeth townsend
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Primate Research ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
Cooked Food ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Brain

Humans: The Cooking Ape Perhaps the first to suggest that humans were cooking as early as 1.9 million years ago, Richard Wrangham shows through his new research and his imagination how and possibly when cooking changed humans dramatically. Wrangham, Harvard University primatologist and MacArthur Fellow, has been studying the evolution of human cooking. After 25 years of primate research at his site in Kibale, Uganda, Wrangham is best known for explaining the similarity and differences across species of primate social organizations. In Kibale, he has analyzed chimpanzees’ behavior: how it’s changed when they interact with the environment and how their social groups have evolved. In particular, he noticed how food changed their interactions with each other. Like that of chimps, human behavior has been affected by food, especially as they shifted from raw to cooked food. Moving from eating food as it was discovered to collecting edibles and cooking them altered our social relationships. Cooked food has changed Homo sapiens physically by making food more digestible thereby altering jaws, teeth, and guts, and providing more calories for more expensive organs such as the brain. Wrangham discusses when and how humans may have started using fire to cook food, what they cooked, and the transition from cooking in an outdoor fire to hearths and open ovens.

scholarly journals Veto and Vacillation: A Neural Precursor of the Decision to Withhold Action

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erman Misirlisoy ◽  
Patrick Haggard
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Temporal Pattern ◽  
Neural Precursor ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
Readiness Potentials ◽  
Preparatory Activity ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Motor Areas

The capacity to inhibit a planned action gives human behavior its characteristic flexibility. How this mechanism operates and what factors influence a decision to act or not act remain relatively unexplored. We used EEG readiness potentials (RPs) to examine preparatory activity before each action of an ongoing sequence, in which one action was occasionally omitted. We compared RPs between sequences in which omissions were instructed by a rule (e.g., “omit every fourth action”) and sequences in which the participant themselves freely decided which action to omit. RP amplitude was reduced for actions that immediately preceded a voluntary omission but not a rule-based omission. We also used the regular temporal pattern of the action sequences to explore brain processes linked to omitting an action by time-locking EEG averages to the inferred time when an action would have occurred had it not been omitted. When omissions were instructed by a rule, there was a negative-going trend in the EEG, recalling the rising ramp of an RP. No such component was found for voluntary omissions. The results are consistent with a model in which spontaneously fluctuating activity in motor areas of the brain could bias “free” decisions to act or not.

Neuroscience: The New English Major?

2021 ◽  
pp. 107385842110039
Author(s):  
Kristin F. Phillips ◽  
Harald Sontheimer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Graduate Education ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Undergraduate Curriculum ◽  
Virginia Tech ◽  
Bachelor's Degree ◽  
State University ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
English Major ◽  
The Brain

Once strictly the domain of medical and graduate education, neuroscience has made its way into the undergraduate curriculum with over 230 colleges and universities now offering a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience. The disciplinary focus on the brain teaches students to apply science to the understanding of human behavior, human interactions, sensation, emotions, and decision making. In this article, we encourage new and existing undergraduate neuroscience programs to envision neuroscience as a broad discipline with the potential to develop competencies suitable for a variety of careers that reach well beyond research and medicine. This article describes our philosophy and illustrates a broad-based undergraduate degree in neuroscience implemented at a major state university, Virginia Tech. We highlight the fact that the research-centered Experimental Neuroscience major is least popular of our four distinct majors, which underscores our philosophy that undergraduate neuroscience can cater to a different audience than traditionally thought.

‘Story of one’s life and a tree of friends’ – understanding millennials’ information behaviour in social networks

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 489-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Read ◽  
Chirag Shah ◽  
Lupita S-O’Brien ◽  
Jaqueline Woolcott
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Space ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Comprehensive Literature Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rich Data ◽  
Work Supports

Exploring ways in which new technology impacts adolescents’ information behaviours and creates a social space requires holistic investigation. A qualitative study of 21 seniors in an upper-middle-class suburban high school revealed highly individualized use of Facebook and its features. These included: (i) Friends groups of 50—3700 members, with even the largest groups representative primarily of face-to-face connections, and (ii) a clear articulation within those groups of various categories, each with its own distinct communicative channel and style. A meaningful connection was found between the social value of various social network (SN)-mediated relationships and the communicative modes used to maintain and enhance them. Through a comprehensive literature review and clearly grounded analysis of rich data, this work supports the contention that adolescent social groups in which SNs are embedded form a distinct domain, and establishes a rationale for further investigation of adolescents’ contextualized use of SNs within social relationships.

The Brain and Human Behavior

Science ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 84 (2176) ◽  
pp. 10-10
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
The Brain

scholarly journals How Social Groups are Represented in the Brain: Clues from Neuropsychology

2012 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 76-77
Author(s):  
R. Rumiati ◽  
A. Carnaghi ◽  
E. Improta ◽  
A. Diez ◽  
M. Silveri
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
The Brain

scholarly journals Personal Life, Pragmatism and Bricolage

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 129-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social World ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Link Structure ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Social Legitimation

Individualisation theory misrepresents and romanticises the nature of agency as a primarily discursive and reflexive process where people freely create their personal lives in an open social world divorced from tradition. But empirically we find that people usually make decisions about their personal lives pragmatically, bounded by circumstances and in connection with other people, not only relationally but also institutionally. This pragmatism is often non-reflexive, habitual and routinised, even unconscious. Agents draw on existing traditions - styles of thinking, sanctioned social relationships, institutions, the presumptions of particular social groups and places, lived law and social norms - to ‘patch’ or ‘piece together' responses to changing situations. Often it is institutions that ‘do the thinking’. People try to both conserve social energy and seek social legitimation in this adaption process, a process which can lead to a ‘re-serving' of tradition even as institutional leakage transfers meanings from past to present, and vice versa. But this process of bricolage will always be socially contested and socially uneven. In this way bricolage describes how people actually link structure and agency through their actions, and can provide a framework for empirical research on doing family.

scholarly journals Influence of Retail Therapy upon Shoppers Experience in Organized Retailing at Select Retail Malls in Grater Hyderabad

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 3644-3649
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Role ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Normal Functioning ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
Impulsive Buying ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Good For ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Brain

We humans live life for attaining happiness by the way of fulfilling our needs wants & desires. We work hard to earn and satisfy all our requirements. We strive to derive a better experience upon our every shopping attempt which we make. Retail therapy in shopping is to improve the shoppers mood or disposition which is seen among people during depression or stress, in normal context it is a small duration-lived habit. Products purchased during period of retail therapy are also referred to as "comfort buys". in shopping experience, human brain apparently releases the chemical known as dopamine, a natural messenger required for the normal functioning of the brain, and it plays dominant role in our ability to experience pleasure and pain. It appears also to have a role in addictive behavior. The most important reason shopping malls are so popular is due to convenience. Which include clothing stores, a food court, movie theaters, etc Shopping might not be good for wallet, but it could be good for health, new research suggests. Walking within the mall between stores, multiplex, food court, gaming zone etc provides better enjoyment experience which ultimately results into shopper’s satisfaction. “Therapy” denotes the favorable impact of shopping experience of shoppers at shopping malls, there are indeed psychological rewards. This article discuses about retail therapy from shoppers’ experience point of view as depending upon the experience, knowledge & situation the shoppers intend to make compulsive or impulsive buying which impacts behavior of shopper & emotions which are been motivated by desire to fulfill material needs and wants.

The Engineer

Rebel Genius ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara H. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Reticular Formation ◽  
Research Laboratory ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Theoretical Modelling ◽  
Research Culture ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
New Research ◽  
Scientific Identity ◽  
The Brain

This chapter examines the ways that McCulloch’s new research culture at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics shaped the evolution of his scientific identity into that of an engineer. This was an open, fluid, multidisciplinary culture that allowed McCulloch to shift his focus more squarely onto understanding the brain from the perspective of theoretical modelling, and to promote the cybernetic vision to diverse audiences. McCulloch’s practices, performed with a new set of student-collaborators, involved modeling the neurophysiology of perception, understanding reliability in biological systems, and pursuing knowledge of the reticular formation of the brain. The chapter provides a nuanced account of the relations between McCulloch’s work and the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences. It also highlights McCulloch’s identities as sage-collaborator and polymath, two roles that in part were the result of his students’ observations and in part products of his own self-fashioning.

Groups and Social Boundaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-108
Author(s):  
Jan Fuhse
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Concept ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Network Patterns ◽  
Social Units

Social groups were a key concept in early sociology (German formal sociology, symbolic interactionism). Since the 1960s, they have been replaced by “social network” as the prime concept for informal social structures. We rarely find the bounded and internally homogeneous social units suggested by the group concept in the real world. Instead, individuals are embedded in a complex mesh of social relationships. Building on relational sociology, we can reconceptualize groups as a particular case of densely connected network patterns of social relationships. These exist only by degree, to the extent that they are reinforced by a social boundary separating the group members symbolically from the outside world and by foci of activity for the group to meet. Densely connected groups develop a particular group culture, and they frequently use symbols to signal group membership and the cultural difference to other groups and to the wider cultural context (group style).

A Brief History of Life and Brain Evolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Coolidge
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Differences ◽  
Behavioral Features ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain Shape ◽  
Evolutionary Fitness

This chapter reviews some of the fundamentals of evolution, particularly adaptations and exaptations. Adaptations are physical or behavioral features that through natural selection aided survival and reproduction. Exaptations are physical or behavioral features that have been co-opted from their initial adaptive functions and subsequently enhanced fitness. The reuse, recycling, or redeployment of brain neurons for purposes other than their original adaption may be considered a central organizing principle of the brain. The chapter reviews the beginnings of life and presents a timeline of life through the evolution of hominins. The term hominin refers to all current and extinct relatives and ancestors of Homo sapiens, including the australopithecines and habilines, within about the last 6 million years. The chapter introduces the hypothesis that Homo sapiens survived and flourished, instead of Neandertals, Denisovans, and other hominins, because of brain shape differences, which created cognitive differences that enhanced the evolutionary fitness of Homo sapiens.

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