Evolving Cognition - Deep Origins of Human Brain Adaptations
Cornell University, BIONB 1220, Fall 2022*
*** I received alternative funding for the Fall 2022 semester and unfortunately had to turn down the opportunity to teach the third iteration of my FWS course. I hope to have the opportunity to teach this course sometime in the near future. For more information on Cornell's FWS courses offered through the Knight Institute, see here. ***
Course Description
What are the neural bases of human thoughts, emotions, and cognition? How do natural selection and ecological challenges shape cognitive adaptations over deep evolutionary time, and can this knowledge be harnessed to better understand our own modern psychology? This writing course will introduce students to core concepts in neurobiology and evolution while developing critical writing and composition skills pertinent to communicating within the natural science disciplines. Using popular science readings and the primary literature, students will explore the bases of brain-behavior relationships and how certain human cognitive capacities may logically arise from ancient brain structures. Through written opinion and analyses of such topics, students will improve their ability to interpret and communicate scientific research while simultaneously learning to construct persuasive arguments in their own writing.
Course Rationale
This course is designed to mature students' skills as writers through engagement with questions surrounding the evolution of cognitive abilities. Considering humans from a comparative evolutionary perspective can help us to better understand the incremental emergence of cognition over deep evolutionary timescales. From the last universal common ancestor to the modern human brain, students will encounter a cast of characters both living and extinct to elucidate mental abilities shared across species. We will also investigate how technology intersects with modern human cognitive capacities, and will speculate on how that relationship may develop in the future. A major emphasis will be placed on teaching students about the relationship between data and writing in the scientific process, as well as on exposing students to the most prevalent forms of written communication within the STEM disciplines. Students will both read and produce various forms of scholarly writing, including but not limited to: cogent expository prose, descriptive natural history observations, research press releases, and academic literature reviews. Students will also learn to use existing academic literature to generate novel scientific questions, hypotheses, and predictions about a topic related to their personal scientific or career interests, which will be included in an original research grant proposal submitted at the end of the semester.
Course Units & Modules
Unit 1: Writing Assessment - Contemplating the Nature of Knowledge
- Course Introduction & Goals - The Neural Basis of Knowledge / A gene's eye view of evolution
Unit 2: Scholarly writing and the process of peer review - Write to think, think to write
- Ancient Structures I: Neurons and the need for speed
- Ancient Structures II: The basal ganglia / What to do and when to do it
- Ancient Structures III: A central role for dopamine / Untangling reward from motivation
- Ancient Structures IV: Emotions, pleasure, and pain
Unit 3: Analyzing and summarizing arguments - What do you want to say?
- Deep Origins I: From LUCA to mammals
- Deep Origins II: From the mammalian LCA to the primate LCA
- Deep Origins III: Maternal bonds, pair bonds, and friendships (a.k.a. evolution is lazy!)
Unit 4: Science communication - Who is your audience?
- Primates I: The neocortex and primate brain specializations
- Primates II: Behavioral specializations / Social structures of the great apes
- Primates III: Hominin evolution / What's language got to do with it?
Unit 5: Grant writing techniques - The reward of generating new knowledge
- Human Cognition I: Tragedies of the broken mind / Habits, addiction, and suffering
- Human Cognition II: Cognition and consciousness
- Human Cognition III: The future of neuroscience / Practical lessons from a neuroepistemic worldview