Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Amygdala Responsible For Our Sense Of Personal Space
Here's a nice "social brain" story from Ralph Adolphs, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Caltech. Using a unique patient, SM, who has bilateral lesions to the amygdalae they have been able to establish that the amygdala alerts us to when people literally "get in our face". SM behaves totally inappropriately socially in that she can tolerate people approaching her practically nose to nose and does not observe reasonable social distance herself. She cannot interpret fear in faces and find trouble gauging other peoples' trustworthiness. She is just too friendly. Their findings may link to autism studies because autistics have problems with the concept of appropriate social distance and have to be taught what it is.
Researchers Map Chimpanzee Facial Emotions
Kim Bard, now director of the Centre for the Study of Emotion at Portsmouth - formerly from Yerkes Research Centre in Atlanta, has been developing a "Baby Chimp Facial Action Coding System" to classify the wide range of facial emotions in chimps. Baby chimps may have an even larger range of facial emotions than human infants, she says, and may be better at controlling their emotions when very young. They claim to have found 16 variations of smile on the face of the chimp, compared with 13 in human babies and 5 different varieties of the fear grin.