Deep Time and the Evolution of Cognition
Talk by Prof. Dr. Onur Güntürkün
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Great apes like chimpanzees are smart and have a large neocortex. In comparison, birds like corvids and parrots have much smaller brains and no neocortex. This should cast a dim prospect on their cognitive abilities. But studies of the last two decades revealed that there is not a single cognitive ability of chimpanzees (brain weight 400g) that was not also demonstrated in corvids and parrots (brain weights 3-25g). How is that possible? This question keeps me awake because it challenges core assumptions on the neural fundaments of complex cognition. Meanwhile I realized that I must travel back into the deep time of vertebrate evolution to find answers. This talk is about this journey. |
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The lines of birds and mammals separated about 324 million years ago and thereafter both taxa independently evolved the metabolically costly ability to maintain a favorable body temperature (endothermy). To secure the drastically increased energy demands, both birds and mammals increased their brain weights by a factor of 10 and their neuron numbers by a factor 20. They became smart. But in the end, their brains still look very different. I will show that these seemingly different brains independently evolved similar mental algorithms that can only be realized with comparable neural implementations. At first site, it looks as if evolution lacks creativity to come up with different kinds of complex cognitions in different brains. I’m convinced that this is not the case. Instead, evolution just faces a severe limitation of degrees of freedom to wire vertebrate brains for cognitive operations. Therefore, it utilizes again and again a small and identifiable set of “hard-to-replace” mechanisms. These insights could pave the way to understand which neural features really matters for complex cognition. |
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Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Onur Güntürkün
Onur Güntürkün studierte von 1975 bis 1980 Psychologie in Bochum, 1984 wurde er promoviert. Danach arbeitete er als Postdoc an der Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris) und der University of California at San Diego (USA). Von 1988 bis 1993 war Onur Güntürkün Wissenschaftlicher Assistent an der Universität Konstanz, dort erfolgte 1991 seine Habilitation für Psychologie. 1993 nahm er den Ruf auf eine Professur für Biopsychologie an der Fakultät für Psychologie der Ruhr-Universität Bochum an.