The five portals of cognitive evolution

08/10/23 • 64 min

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Welcome back all! So, this episode is a first for us. Two firsts, actually. For one, it features our first-ever repeat guest: Andrew Barron, a neuroscientist at Macquarie University. If you're a long-time listener, you might remember that Andy was actually the guest on our very first episode, 'Of bees and brains,' in February 2020. And, second, this episode is our first-ever "live show." We recorded this interview in July at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute in St Andrews, Scotland.

Andy and his colleagues—the philosophers Marta Halina and Colin Klein—just released an ambitious paper titled 'Transitions in Cognitive Evolution.' In it, they take a wide-angle view of mind; they zoom out to try to tell an overarching story of how brains and cognition evolved across the tree of life. The story, as they tell it, is not about a smoothly gradual evolution of cognitive sophistication. Rather, it's a story built around five major transitions—fundamental changes, that is, to how organisms process information.

In this conversation, Andy and I discuss their framework and how it takes inspiration from other transitional accounts of life and mind. We lay out each of the five stages—or portals, as we refer to them—and talk about the organisms that we find on either side of these portals. We discuss what propels organisms to make these radical changes, especially considering that evolution is not prospective. It doesn't look ahead—it can't see what abilities might be possible down the road. We talk about how this framework got its start, particularly in some of Andy's thinking about insect brains and how they differ from vertebrate brains. And, as a bit of a bonus, we left in some of the live Q & A with the audience. In it we touch on octopuses, eusocial insects, oysters, and a bunch else.

Speaking of major transitions, I will be going on parental leave for much of the fall. So this is, in fact, the final episode of Season 4 and then the podcast will go on a brief hiatus. Before we get started on Season 5, we'll be putting up some of our favorite episodes from the archive.

Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Andrew Barron, recorded live at DISI 2023. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

3:30 – For further information about the “major transitions” project, see the project’s web page here.

7:00 – Many transitional accounts of evolution draw inspiration from the classic book The Major Transitions in Evolution.

8:00 – One influential previous transitional account of the evolution of cognition was put forward by Dennett in Kinds of Minds. Another was put forward by Ginsburg and Jablonka in The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.

12:45 – A brief introduction to cnidaria.

18:00 – The idea of cellular memory has been garnering more and more attention—see, e.g., this popular article.

21:00 – The idea of “reflective” systems is also used in computer science.

26:00 – The scala naturae, or Great Chain of Being, was the notion that organisms could be arranged on a scale of sophistication, with humans on the top of the scale.

30:00 – The “teleological fallacy” as Dr. Barron and colleagues describe it in their paper is the fallacy of “appeal[ing] to later benefits to explain earlier changes.”

34:00 – A brief introduction to the phylum gastropoda.

37:00 – For an overview of Dr. Barron’s work on the neuroscience of honey bees, see our previous episode.

48:30 – It’s commonly observed in popular coverage of octopuses that their brains are “decentralized” (e.g.,

Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Andrew Barron, recorded live at DISI 2023. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

3:30 – For further information about the “major transitions” project, see the project’s web page here.

7:00 – Many transitional accounts of evolution draw inspiration from the classic book The Major Transitions in Evolution.

12:45 – A brief introduction to cnidaria.

18:00 – The idea of cellular memory has been garnering more and more attention—see, e.g., this popular article.

21:00 – The idea of “reflective” systems is also used in computer science.

26:00 – The scala naturae, or Great Chain of Being, was the notion that organisms could be arranged on a scale of sophistication, with humans on the top of the scale.

30:00 – The “teleological fallacy” as Dr. Barron and colleagues describe it in their paper is the fallacy of “appeal[ing] to later benefits to explain earlier changes.”

34:00 – A brief introduction to the phylum gastropoda.

37:00 – For an overview of Dr. Barron’s work on the neuroscience of honey bees, see our previous episode.

48:30 – It’s commonly observed in popular coverage of octopuses that their brains are “decentralized” (e.g.,

Previous Episode

Matrescence and the brain

Scientists who study the mind and brain have always been drawn to periods of intense change—to those life stages marked by rapid transformation. Infancy is one of those periods, of course. Adolescence is another. But there's a less-discussed time of life when our brains and minds have to reconfigure: the window surrounding when we become parents.

My guests today are Dr. Winnie Orchard and Dr. Jodi Pawluski. Winnie is a cognitive neuroscientist and postdoctoral scholar at the Yale Child Study Center. Jodi is a neuroscientist, author, and podcaster affiliated with the University of Rennes in France. Both are experts in the neural and cognitive changes that surround pregnancy, motherhood, and parenthood more generally.

Here, we talk about the idea of "matrescence" as a distinctive developmental stage. We discuss the research around memory loss in early motherhood, as well as findings that certain brain areas get fine-tuned during this period. We talk about postpartum anxiety, depression, and psychosis, and what may be causing them. We consider the finding that having children—and, in fact, having more children—seems to confer a protective effect on the aging brain. Throughout we talk about which of these changes also occur in fathers and other non-birthing parents. And we consider the difficulty of scientifically studying a period of life—parenthood—that is not only rife with social and psychological changes, but also fraught with expectations and narratives.

Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. As you'll hear, this research area is very much still in its infancy. There are definitely some provocative findings. But maybe more exciting are all the questions that remain.

Without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Winnie Orchard and Dr. Jodi Pawluski. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

2:45 – For more on the relationship between adolescence and “matrescence,” see this recent review paper by Winnie and colleagues in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

6:00 – For discussions surrounding the idea of “mommy brain,” see Jodi’s podcast, ‘Mommy Brain Revisited.’ See also this recent editorial by Jodi and colleagues in JAMA Neurology.

17:00 – A recent meta-analysis on cognitive impairment during pregnancy.

25:00 – A study by Winnie and colleagues showing subjective—but not objective—memory deficits in mothers one year after giving birth.

26:45 – An influential study showing structural changes in the brain following pregnancy. The same study also found that some of these changes correlated with measures of maternal attachment.

28:00 – A recent review article by Jodi and colleagues on the idea of neural fine-tuning in early motherhood.

41:45 – A recent review paper by Jodi and colleagues about the neural underpinnings of postpartum depression and anxiety.

44:00 – A review paper about postpartum psychosis.

51:00 – A study on the prevalence of postpartum depression across cultures.

58:00 – A 2014 review of research on mother-child synchrony.

1:00:00 – A recent study by Winnie and colleagues looking at how having children affects later life brain function. Another study by Winnie and colleagues on the same topic.

1:13:00 – Several studies have documented general changes in “Big 5” personality factors as people age. A study examining this in both American and Japanese participants is here.

1:18:00 – Since we recorded this interview, the publication date for the English version of Jodi’s book has been scheduled...

Next Episode

From the archive: Happiness and the predictive mind

Hi friends, we will be on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy!

———

There's an old view of the mind that goes something like this: The world is flooding in, and we're sitting back, just trying to process it all. Our minds are basically passive and reactive, always a step behind. Contrast that view with a new one that’s quickly gaining ground. According to this alternative, we don't just react to the world, we anticipate it. We’re not leaning back but trying to stay a step ahead—our minds are fundamentally active and predictive. And our predictions aren't just idle guesses, either—they're shaping how we experience the world. This new view is known as the “predictive processing framework”, and it has implications, not just for how we perceive, but also for how we act and how we feel, for our happiness and our well-being.

My guest today is Dr. Mark Miller. Mark is a philosopher of cognition and senior research fellow at the Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies at Monash University. He's part of a new wave of intensely interdisciplinary scholars who are working at the intersections of philosophy, neuroscience, and psychiatry.

Here, Mark and I sketch the predictive processing framework and unpack some of its key pillars. We discuss how this approach can inform our understanding of depression, addiction, and PTSD. We sketch out notions of loops and slopes, stickiness and rigidity, wobble and volatility, edges and grip. And, on the way, we will have a bit to say about video games, play, horror, psychedelics, and meditation.

This was all pretty new terrain for me, but Mark proved an affable and capable guide. If you enjoy this episode and want to explore some of these topics further, definitely check out the Contemplative Science Podcast, which Mark co-hosts.

Alright friends, on to my chat with Mark Miller. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

4:15 – The website of the Hokkaido University Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN). The website of the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS).

6:00 – Dr. Miller co-hosts the Contemplative Science podcast, a project of M3CS.

7:30 – For one introduction to the predictive processing framework, see this article by Dr. Miller and colleagues.

11:00 – See Dr. Miller’s essay in Aeon on social media, co-authored with Ben White, as well as this more detailed treatment for an academic audience.

12:00 – See a paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues on depression.

14:00 – An introduction to the subfield of “computational psychiatry.”

17:00 – Andy Clark’s “watershed” paper on the predictive processing framework.

18:00 – A recent book on “active inference” (which is largely synonymous with the predictive processing approach).

22:00 – A chapter on the idea of the “body as the first prior.”

24:30 – A demo of the “hollow face” illusion.

29:00 – On the potential value of psychedelics in jarring people out of trenches and ruts, see also our earlier episode with Alison Gopnik.

31:00 – See our recent episode with Dimitris Xygalatas.

34:30 – A popular article on children wanting to hea...