Scientists find link between gene and sensitivity to emotional environment

In NOT A CHIMP I detail research that looked at the tie-up between anxious personality traits and the carriage of a short repeat variant of the gene for the serotonin transporter molecule at the synapse. Here a group of scientists, principally at the University of Essex, carry the research forward in a very gratifying way. They find that carriers of the short repeat have a negative cognitive bias which can be trained by cognitive therapy to be more positive. So they tend to take more notice of negative or threatening information, and, conversely, blossom when they are subject to very supportive social experiences.

"Professor Elaine Fox, who led the study, explained: "Our findings suggest that people with a short serotonin transporter gene are likely to be far more reactive to both very negative situations, such as a car crash, and very positive ones, such as a very supportive relationship. This supports the idea of short serotonin transporter genes as 'adaptability', rather than 'vulnerability', genes. They may not only increase the risk of an individual developing emotional vulnerability in a negative environment but also increase the chances of them benefiting from a supportive environment, compared to people with the long form...People with a long serotonin transporter gene are likely to be less influenced by their emotional environment, which may help to protect them from negative events but could also mean that they are less able to benefit from a positive environment."

Their studies support work from Oxford which suggests that "drugs used to treat anxiety and depression by lowering serotonin levels at the gap between nerve cells (such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) might work by reducing a patient's negative attention bias, causing them to adopt a more positive outlook on life that leads to a decrease in anxiety and depression."

""This opens the door to the idea of personalized treatments for anxiety disorders. Information about the genotype and cognitive biases of a patient could be used to inform decisions about which treatments, such as ABM and cognitive behavioural therapy, are likely to be most effective," Professor Fox said."

I know something you don’t know – and I will tell you!

The battle in comparative cognitive psychology has raged for years about what chimpanzees, and other species, do and don't know about the minds of other con-specifics. In NOT A CHIMP I took a dismal view of a chimp's ability to "mind-read" but evidence continues to be offered which is much more optimistic about the contents of a chimpanzee's mind and its ability to get some inkling of the state of mind of others - that their knowledge or ignorance of a situation, for instance, may differ from their own. In this report, from 30-odd chimps in the wild, researchers from the University of St. Andrews and Leipzig present evidence that chimps who know about a potential source of danger - a snake in the grass for instance - will preferentially warning-call to other chimps in the immediate neighbourhood if they think they are ignorant of the presence of the danger.

Crows show advanced learning abilities

In the chapter CLEVER CORVIDS in NOT A CHIMP I detail cognitive psychology research on crows and other corvid birds which showed they have extraordinary powers of tool manufacture and use; understanding of deception; and planning for the future - otherwise known as mental time travel. After publication, Nathan Emery added to the list of corvid mental attributes by showing that ravens could solve the Aesop problem of water displacement to recover floating food. Here New Zealand researchers Hunt and Taylor team up with Emery and Clayton to demonstrate the same skill in New Caledonian crows who, without prior learning, seem to realize that dropping big stones into containers of water containing food will cause the food to rise until it can be retrieved using the beak. The paper is in the open access PLoS 1:

More information: Taylor AH, Elliffe DM, Hunt GR, Emery NJ, Clayton NS, et al. (2011) New Caledonian Crows Learn the Functional Properties of Novel Tool Types. PLoS ONE 6(12): e26887. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0026887

'Look at that!' -- ravens use gestures, too

In NOT A CHIMP I mention the research of Thomas Bugnyar and various colleagues, using ravens. Here he breaks down another species barrier by demonstrating that ravens are capable of meaningful gestures to and with objects in order to get the attention of the other member of the pair.

"For two years, Simone Pika und Thomas Bugnyar investigated the non-vocal behaviour of individually marked members of a wild raven community in the Cumberland Wildpark in Grünau, Austria. They observed that ravens use their beaks similar to hands to show and offer objects such as moss, stones and twigs. These distinct gestures were predominantly aimed at partners of the opposite sex and resulted in frequent orientation of recipients to the object and the signallers. Subsequently, the ravens interacted with each other, for example, by example billing or joint manipulation of the object.

This new study shows that differentiated gestures have especially evolved in species with a high degree of collaborative abilities. "Gesture studies have too long focused on communicative skills of primates only. The mystery of the origins of human language, however, can only be solved if we look at the bigger picture and also consider the complexity of the communication systems of other animal groups" says Simone Pika from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology."

Reference: "Simone Pika & Thomas Bugnyar, The use of referential gestures in ravens (Corvus corax) in the wild, Nature Communications, November 29, 2011, 10.1038/ncomms1567

Researches find poop-throwing by chimps is a sign of intelligence

Bill Hopkins, from Emory University, Atlanta, is thew world-leader in the art and science of brain-scanning live chimpanzees. He has recently been comparing the brains of chimps that are good throwers - they are accurate and have a clear target in mind - and less adept chimps. They find that the proportion of white to grey matter is increased in the precentral gyrus - the relevant motor centre, but also in the chimp homologue to Broca's speech area in the left hemisphere. They also found that the better throwers were the better communicators. Could the brain organization that facilitated throwing have laid the foundations for the evolution of speech centres in the brain, they ask. Here's the abstract:

"Abstract
It has been hypothesized that neurological adaptations associated with evolutionary selection for throwing may have served as a precursor for the emergence of language and speech in early hominins. Although there are reports of individual differences in aimed throwing in wild and captive apes, to date there has not been a single study that has examined the potential neuroanatomical correlates of this very unique tool-use behaviour in non-human primates. In this study, we examined whether differences in the ratio of white (WM) to grey matter (GM) were evident in the homologue to Broca's area as well as the motor-hand area of the precentral gyrus (termed the KNOB) in chimpanzees that reliably throw compared with those that do not. We found that the proportion of WM in Broca's homologue and the KNOB was significantly higher in subjects that reliably throw compared with those that do not. We further found that asymmetries in WM within both brain regions were larger in the hemisphere contralateral to the chimpanzee's preferred throwing hand. We also found that chimpanzees that reliably throw show significantly better communication abilities than chimpanzees that do not. These results suggest that chimpanzees that have learned to throw have developed greater cortical connectivity between primary motor cortex and the Broca's area homologue. It is suggested that during hominin evolution, after the split between the lines leading to chimpanzees and humans, there was intense selection on increased motor skills associated with throwing and that this potentially formed the foundation for left hemisphere specialization associated with language and speech found in modern humans.

And for those who can access it, here's the link to the PTRS B series paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0195

Genetic study confirms: First dogs came from East Asia

In NOT A CHIMP I discuss the evidence that humans have self-domesticated. One animal model of the process is dogs. The suggestion is that, rather than humans cultivating wild wolves and domesticating them, the wolves did it themselves through a long process of commensalism around early human encampments. But where on the globe did that process begin and what type of wolf best represents the dog ancestor? There is a long-running battle, based on genetics and archaeology, between researchers who believe the Middle East was the cradle of dog domestication and those who prefer East Asia. Here, Peter Savolainen, from Sweden, presents strong genetic evidence that all dogs emanated from an area of wolf domestication in what they call the ASY region - Asia south of the Yangtze - in southern China. The article discusses no dates and does not debate the commensalism versus purposeful selection argument for how dogs acquired their domesticated traits.

'Language gene' speeds learning

In NOT A CHIMP I detail the discovery of the FOXP2 gene and its role in human language and the oro-facial muscular movements required to produce intelligible speech. Scientists at the Max Planck in Leipzig have been looking ever since for the answer to precisely how it works and have recently reported work on mice that have had the human version of the FOXP2 gene "knocked into" them. They prove to be better learners of maze-negotiating tasks than normal mice. But how can this lead to language? The team seem to be suggesting that human FOXP2 allows humans to learn the complex muscular movements that form speech - but it is hard to understand this, because, as Faraneh Vargha-Khadem (the scientist who has done all the work on articulation difficulties in families with FOXP2 mutation and speech and learning difficulties) says - such muscular control is involuntary. I suspect that further work on the basal ganglia will get us closer to the answer.