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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220103T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220103T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T075849
CREATED:20211129T171521Z
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UID:6358-1641211200-1641216600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Daniel Sznycer - Value Computation in Humans
DESCRIPTION:Valuing things comes naturally to us. But valuing things would be a forbidding task if we lacked the information-processing machinery that enables value computation and that needs to be understood. How does the human brain compute the value of things\, events\, and states of affairs? Things afford positive\, neutral\, or negative long-run effects on the replicative probability of the focal individual’s genes. At the most general level\, values are internal estimates of those effects. Value information steers physiology and behavior in the right direction: approach apple; avoid enemy. Therefore\, value computation is of paramount biological importance. In the first part of the talk\, I will discuss shame\, pride\, and other social emotions. These emotions function to recalibrate the social valuations held by self and others. For example\, shame functions to minimize the likelihood and cost of being devalued by others when negative information about the self spreads into the community. I will discuss findings my collaborators and I have published showing functionality and regularity in emotion across mass societies and small-scale societies and throughout history. The emotion–valuation nexus regulates interpersonal interactions. This nexus may also form the core of\, e.g.\, justice-making institutions. For example\, the shame laypeople report if they committed each of various offenses echoes the legal thinking of lawmakers—shame intensities retrodict the punishments provided for offenses by actual laws\, including laws from radically unfamiliar cultures (e.g.\, the Tang Code\, China CE 653; the Laws of Eshnunna\, Mesopotamia ca. 1770 BCE). In the second part of the talk\, I will focus on value computation. One wants to know: What features does a computational system need to be equipped with in order to value anything and everything that humans are known to value?—true friendship and self-transcendence\, but also: water\, rice\, honey\, obsidian\, harpoons\, the Cessna 172\, fire\, fire extinguishers\, double-entry bookkeeping\, sleeping\, explanations\, allies\, mates\, etc. I will present recent findings indicating accuracy and adaptive integration in value computation. For example\, the subjective food value imputed to a hot dog reflects the protein and carbohydrate content of the hot dog (accuracy); the intensity of gratitude aroused if someone gave you a hot dog reflects the food value imputed to the hot dog (integration). Task analysis suggests many additional features are involved in human value computation\, some of which have been mapped out (e.g.\, common neural representation of value) and some of which have not. More research is needed!
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/daniel-sznycer/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220110T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220110T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T075849
CREATED:20220102T175847Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220117T225052Z
UID:6390-1641816000-1641821400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Ed Hagen - Homo medicus: The transition to meat eating\, increased pathogen pressure\, and the constitutive and inducible use of pharmacological plants in Homo
DESCRIPTION:Homo medicus: The transition to meat eating\, increased pathogen pressure\, and the constitutive and inducible use of pharmacological plants in Homo\n\n\n\nEdward H. Hagen\, Aaron D. Blackwell\, Aaron D. Lightner\, Roger J. Sullivan\n\n\n\nClick here for link to manuscript pre-print\n\n  \nThe human lineage entered a more carnivorous niche 2.6 mya. A range of evidence indicates this increased zoonotic pathogen pressure. This evidence includes increased zoonotic infections modern hunter-gatherers and bushmeat hunters relative to others living in the same environments\, exceptionally low stomach pH compared to other primates\, human-specific down-regulation in ANTXR2 that would have protected against increased exposure to zoonotic anthrax\, exceptional human immune responses to LPS compared to other primates\, and other divergent immune genes. These all point to change\, and likely intensification\, in the disease environment of Homo compared to earlier hominins and other apes. At the same time\, the brain\, an organ in which inflammatory immune responses are highly constrained\, begins to increase\, eventually tripling in size. \n\nWe propose that the combination of increased zoonotic pathogen pressure and the challenges of defending a large brain and body from pathogens across what would eventually become the longest lifespan of any mammal\, selected for intensification of the self-medication strategies already in place in apes and other primates\, resulting in a variety of plant-based pathogen defenses. In support\, there is evidence of medicinal plant use by hominins in the middle Paleolithic\, and all cultures today have sophisticated\, plant-based medical systems\, incorporate plant components high in secondary compounds (spices) into food\, and regularly consume psychoactive substances that are harmful to helminths and other pathogens in the CNS and other tissues. The computational challenges of discovering effective plant-based treatments\, and the economic challenges of benefiting from costly-to-acquire medical knowledge that would be more often useful to others than oneself\, were selection pressures for increased cognitive abilities and unique exchange relationships in Homo. In the story of human evolution\, which has long featured hunters\, shamans and healers had an equal role to play.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/ed-hagen/
CATEGORIES:2022,Past Presentation,Presentation
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220124T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220124T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T075849
CREATED:20211129T171712Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220127T225519Z
UID:6361-1643025600-1643031000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Gerry Carter - Cooperative Relationships in Vampire Bats
DESCRIPTION:Several birds and mammals form affiliative relationships with both kin and nonkin that involve multiple forms of cooperation. When individuals form these long-term cooperative relationships\, both the causes and consequences of each individual’s cooperative investments are difficult to study. To understand how individuals form and maintain cooperative relationships\, one must ultimately manipulate both associations and interactions to experimentally test for predicted changes in relationship dynamics. In this talk\, I will review what we have learned so far from 10 years of experiments with common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus). These blood-feeding vampire bats regurgitate food to help unfed bats in need\, and these costly donations occur reciprocally among both related and unrelated adult females. My work to date suggests that such food sharing has origins in extended maternal care and kin selection\, but now provides multiple kinds of direct and indirect fitness benefits through some combination of reciprocity and interdependence. New reciprocal food-sharing relationships form between strangers initially through escalating reciprocal allogrooming\, and new allogrooming relationships can be experimentally “seeded” by forcing bats into close spatial proximity. A key concept is that the amount of fitness interdependence in social relationships can change continuously over time\, blurring the lines between categorical models of cooperation such as reciprocity and ‘pseudo-reciprocity’. \n\nGerry Carter\nOhio State University\nhttps://eeob.osu.edu/people/carter.1640
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/gerry-carter/
CATEGORIES:2022,Past Presentation
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220131T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220131T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T075849
CREATED:20211129T171849Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220211T041909Z
UID:6364-1643630400-1643635800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Jenny Tung - The social genome and primate evolution
DESCRIPTION:Jenny Tung\nDuke University\nhttp://www.tung-lab.org/
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/jenny-tung/
CATEGORIES:2022,Past Presentation
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