Refining the ecological brain: Strong relation between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and feeding ecology in five primate species

Louail, Margot; Gilissen, Emmanuel; Prat, Sandrine; Garcia, Cécile; Bouret, Sébastien

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2019.03.019

Cited by 27 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 86 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Rilling et al (2007) speculated therefore that wakeful rest in the chimpanzees might involve emotionally laden episodic simulation that is independent of language and conceptual processing. Interestingly, and consistent with the hypothesis of Allen and Fortin (2013) on the evolutionary pressures that prompted the emergence of the episodic system, the size of the vmPFC in the primate lineage increases significantly with dietary spectrum and complexity of foraging strategies (Louail et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…Turning to relevant neural mechanisms, as already reviewed in the Introduction, the default mode network exhibits considerable anatomical and functional similarities in humans and chimpanzees (Rilling et al, 2007;Barks et al, 2015). Moreover, in the primate lineage, the size of a key structure implicated in mental construction-the vmPFC-co-varies with foraging complexity (Louail et al, 2019). This is consistent with accumulating evidence that a number of additional features of the prefrontal and medial cortex, which are implicated in a broad range of higher-order cognitive processes, are shared by humans with the other great apes, but less so with monkeys and lesser apes (e.g., Smaers et al, 2017;Amiez et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Chimpanzees Predict the Hedonic Outcome of Novel Taste Combinations: The Evolutionary Origins of Affective Forecasting

Sauciuc

Persson

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Affective forecasting-predicting the emotional outcome of never-before experienced situations-is pervasive in our lives. When facing novel situations, we can quickly integrate bits and pieces of prior experiences to envisage possible scenarios and their outcomes, and what these might feel like. Such affective glimpses of the future often steer the decisions we make. By enabling principled decision-making in novel situations, affective forecasting confers the important adaptive advantage of eluding the potentially costly consequences of tackling such situations by trial-and-error. Affective forecasting has been hypothesized as uniquely human, yet, in a recent study we found suggestive evidence of this ability in an orangutan. To test non-verbal subjects, we capitalized on culinary examples of affective forecasting and devised a behavioral test that required the subjects to make predictions about novel juice mixes produced from familiar ingredients. In the present study, we administered the same task to two chimpanzees and found that their performance was comparable to that of the previously tested orangutan and 10 humans, who served as a comparison group. To improve the comparability of human and animal performance, in the present study we also introduced a new approach to assessing if the subjects' performance was indicative of affective forecasting, which relies exclusively on behavioral data. The results of the study open for the possibility that affective forecasting has evolved in the common ancestor of the great apes, providing Hominids with the adaptive advantage of e.g., quickly evaluating heterogeneous food patches using hedonic prediction.

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chimpanzees Predict the Hedonic Outcome of Novel Taste Combinations: The Evolutionary Origins of Affective Forecasting

Sauciuc

Persson

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Even before comparative neuroimaging, asking different species to perform similar tasks to test their respective cognitive abilities has a long history (see, for instance Joly et al., 2012, Tomasello et al., 1997). One prime example of linking such results to differences in brain organization is provided by Passingham and Wise (2012), who link the evolution of prefrontal cortex to the ability to discover structure in learn of complex tasks (see also Louail, Gilissen, Prat, Garcia, & Bouret, 2019). However, most authors carefully point out that even similar behavioural outcomes in tasks does not mean different species solve the task in the same way.…”

Section: Part Ii: Where Are We With Comparative Mri?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-scale comparative neuroimaging: Where are we and what do we need?

Schotten

Croxson

Mars

2019

Cortex

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Neuroimaging has a lot to offer comparative neuroscience. Although invasive “gold standard” techniques have a better spatial resolution, neuroimaging allows fast, whole-brain, repeatable, and multi-modal measurements of structure and function in living animals and post-mortem tissue. In the past years, comparative neuroimaging has increased in popularity. However, we argue that its most significant potential lies in its ability to collect large-scale datasets of many species to investigate principles of variability in brain organisation across whole orders of species—an ambition that is presently unfulfilled but achievable. We briefly review the current state of the field and explore what the current obstacles to such an approach are. We propose some calls to action.

show abstract

“…Another aspect that may explain a smaller olfactocentric division could be the easier access to food sources in humans. In accordance with the Ecological Brain hypothesis (Milton, 1981), the relative size of the olfactory system (Jacobs, 2012) and the orbitofrontal cortex (Louail et al, 2019) would correlate with the ability to identify access to food resources. Given that humans have easy access to food since birth, the functional connectivity within this system might have been partially pruned during brain development or through evolution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Anchoring the human olfactory system to a functional gradient

Waymel

Friedrich

Bastian

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACTMargulies et al. (2016) demonstrated the existence of at least five independent functional connectivity gradients in the human brain. However, it is unclear how these functional gradients might link to anatomy. The dual origin theory proposes that differences in cortical cytoarchitecture originate from two trends of progressive differentiation between the different layers of the cortex, referred to as the hippocampocentric and olfactocentric systems. When conceptualising the functional connectivity gradients within the evolutionary framework of the Dual Origin theory, the first gradient likely represents the hippocampocentric system anatomically. Here we expand on this concept and demonstrate that the fifth gradient likely links to the olfactocentric system. We describe the anatomy of the latter as well as the evidence to support this hypothesis. Together, the first and fifth gradients might help to model the Dual Origin theory of the human brain and inform brain models and pathologies.

show abstract

Refining the ecological brain: Strong relation between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and feeding ecology in five primate species

Abstract: Refining the ecological brain: Strong relation between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and feeding ecology in five primate species. Cortex, Elsevier, 2019, 118, pp.

Cited by 27 publications

References 86 publications

Chimpanzees Predict the Hedonic Outcome of Novel Taste Combinations: The Evolutionary Origins of Affective Forecasting

Chimpanzees Predict the Hedonic Outcome of Novel Taste Combinations: The Evolutionary Origins of Affective Forecasting

Large-scale comparative neuroimaging: Where are we and what do we need?

Anchoring the human olfactory system to a functional gradient

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About