Tag Archives: Mind

Dolphins use signature whistles to represent other dolphins – similarly to how humans use names

Jason Bruck is Assistant Professor of Biology, Stephen F. Austin State University.
“I focus on the interplay of evolution, cognition and sociality in animals. Specifically I examine how complex social systems in cetaceans, primates and other vertebrates drive the evolution of complex learning and memory skills. Animals with fluid, complex social dynamics have a greater need to remember many social partners over unpredictable lengths of time. Therefore animals with complex social systems like humans, dolphins, chimps, elephants, corvids and some parrots for example should display something called long-term social recognition, which allows them to remember many social partners, sometimes for life.”

Researchers trained an AI model to ‘think’ like a baby, and it suddenly excelled

Susan Hespos is Professor of Infant Studies at MARCS at Western Sydney University and Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA. She leads a research program on understanding our earliest evidence of cognitive capacities in infancy and what changes over development. Her work is published widely in top journals in cognitive and developmental psychology, including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy, Psychological Science and Cognition.

The Intelligent Mind of an Insect

Lars Chittka is the founder of the Research Centre for Psychology at Queen Mary, University of London. Work in the Chittka lab is poised at the intersection between sensory physiology and learning psychology on the one hand, and evolutionary ecology on the other. Why do animals have the sensory systems they do? How do they use them in their natural foraging environment? How do cognitive-behavioural processes function in the economy of nature? Pollinator-plant interactions have been used as a model system to study these questions. Bees have been the organisms of choice in most of these studies, because their colonies can be easily kept, their experience can be readily controlled, they have a rich behavioural repertoire and amazing learning capacities.

Lars Chittka is author of the book ‘The Mind of a Bee’ (Princeton University Press, 2022).

Aquaforming

Robertina Šebjanič is an artist whose work explores the biological, chemical, political and cultural realities of aquatic environments and the impact of humanity on other organisms. Her projects call for the development of empathetic strategies aimed at recognising the rights of other (non-human) species.

Hannah and Joe: Interspecies Art between Bird and Man

“The creative partnership of Hannah and Joe is a striking example of interspecies communication within art, a category in which works of art result from the interactions and meaningful connections between two different species.”

Charissa N. Terranova is a writer and educator. She researches complex biological systems from a cultural purview, focusing on the history of evolutionary theory, biology, and biocentrism in art, architecture, and design.

The Greek Myth Born of Aristotle

Jackie Higgins is a writer and film-maker who works span the arts and the sciences. She is author of ‘Sentient: What Animals Reveal about our Senses’ (Picador, 2021). She read zoology at Oxford University as a student of Richard Dawkins, then worked at Oxford Scientific Films, making wildlife documentaries for National Geographic, BBC Natural world and The Discovery Channel.

Extract from ‘Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps’

Seirian Sumner is a Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London, where she studies the ecology and evolution of social insects. she passionately fights for the wasp to be rightly reframed in the public’s consciousness. From their extraordinary evolutionary story and ecological significance to their sophisticated social worlds, unique hunting methods and cultural inspiration she unravels all their mysteries, challenges our perceptions, and gives reasons to value them, stirring new heraldry for these undiscovered gems of nature. This is an extract from her debut book, ‘Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps’ (William Collins, 2022).

Can consciousness continue after death? A Neuroscientific Perspective

What happens when we die? Unless we accept a religious explanation, the only remaining possibility seems to be the annihilation of consciousness. But another possibility is consistent with evidence from neuroscience. Our brains easily form predictive models of the behavior of close friends and loved ones, which emulate these other selves much as advanced computers can emulate other electronic devices. Whether these emulations are conscious is an open question, but there is preliminary evidence from several sources that the brain can host multiple independent spheres of consciousness. This opens up the possibility of survival through the medium of other brains.

The Bride Stripped Bare: Esoteric Origins for Duchamp’s Large Glass

Hidden as it was for such a long time, Marcel Duchamp’s ‘The Large Glass’, is an esoteric work of art in two ways: first, its private nature, and second, its coded content. This essay by Jacquelynn Baas, a renowned curator, cultural historian, scholar and writer, contains groundbreaking research on Duchamp, Kashmir Shaivism, and Western Esotericism. Her aim is not to furnish a detailed key or step by step guide to Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Large Glass’, as others have attempted to do, but rather to provide a wider global context for interpreting ‘The Large Glass’ and assessing its cultural significance.

Brain charts: first comprehensive view of how the brain changes over a lifetime

Richard Bethlehem is Director of Neuroimaging at the Autism Research Centre and Research Associate at the Brain Mapping Unit, University of Cambridge. He works on integrated Neuroimaging and Transcriptomics in order to gain better understanding of genetic underpinnings of atypical neurodevelopment.

Jakob Seidlitz is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Lifespan Brain Institute of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania. He uses tools such as neuroimaging and genetics to probe basic questions about the emergence of the human brain, how it develops, and what it looks like in various clinical contexts.