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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240129T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240129T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203541
CREATED:20240103T215619Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240131T010232Z
UID:6945-1706529600-1706535000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Elsa Ordway	- Insights from the tropics: a social-ecological systems approach to understanding climate change
DESCRIPTION:Insights from the tropics: a social-ecological systems approach to understanding climate change\nElsa Ordway\nUCLA\nThe tropics are experiencing dramatic changes as a result of climate change and land-use change. Shifts in carbon flux dynamics\, water cycling\, and species composition are resulting in feedbacks with globally important consequences. However\, tropical forests are not a monolith. They vary enormously in terms of species diversity\, climate\, soils\, human interactions\, and much more. As a result\, tropical forest ecosystems are already beginning to show evidence of distinct responses to climate and land-use change. Yet\, these differences remain highly uncertain and poorly understood. An integrated social-ecological systems approach is critical for understanding drivers of and responses to change\, as well as for identifying solutions.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/elsa-ordway-insights-from-the-tropics/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2024,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240122T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240122T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203541
CREATED:20240103T215453Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240124T010814Z
UID:6942-1705924800-1705930200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Emily Lindsey - Dawn of the Anthropocene: How humans in a warming climate drove Pleistocene mammal extinctions and re-shaped California’s landscapes
DESCRIPTION:Dawn of the Anthropocene: How humans in a warming climate drove Pleistocene mammal extinctions and re-shaped California’s landscapes\nEmily Lindsey\nTar Pits/UCLA\n\nThe relative roles late-Quaternary climate changes and human actions played in the extinction of most of the world’s large mammals at the end of the Ice Age have been long-debated.  One key challenge is that the fossil record in most regions is too poorly-constrained to precisely pinpoint the disappearance times of different species and align these with environmental and anthropogenic phenomena.  In this talk\, I will describe how a large-scale\, interdisciplinary effort brought together several remarkable records from southern California to unveil a regional story of fire\, extinction\, and ecosystem state shift. This discovery has significant implications for global megafaunal extinctions research as well as modern conservation efforts.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/emily-lindsey-dawn-of-the-anthropocene/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2024,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231204T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231204T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203541
CREATED:20230925T205931Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231206T010358Z
UID:6870-1701691200-1701696600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Nikhil Chaudhary - Hunter-gatherers\, evolutionary mismatch and mental disorder
DESCRIPTION:Hunter-gatherers\, evolutionary mismatch and mental disorder\nNikhil Chaudhary\nLeverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies\, University of Cambridge\n*Note: This speaker will be remote; However\, we will still be meeting in Haines 352 to watch the talk and conduct the Q&A. \nHumans lived as hunter-gatherers for the vast majority of our evolutionary history\, therefore it has been proposed that aspects of our psychology may be adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. There are several assumptions in this proposal\, however\, research with contemporary hunter-gatherers can offer a useful starting point for exploring the potential for evolutionary mismatch—when an organism faces conditions that differ from those that some trait of the organism is adapted to\, resulting in pathology or maladaptation. Drawing on my fieldwork and previous research\, I will discuss how discordances between the social organisation of hunter-gatherers and WEIRD (Western\, Educated\, Industrialised\, Rich\, Democratic) societies may affect vulnerability to mental disorders in the latter. I will pay particularly attention to differences in residence patterns\, hierarchical structures\, and social networks. I will also discuss differences in childcare strategies and their implications for psychological development.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/nikhil-chaudhary-hunter-gatherers-evolutionary-mismatch-and-mental-disorder/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231127T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231127T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203541
CREATED:20230925T174614Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231128T185939Z
UID:6867-1701086400-1701091800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Theo Samore - Traditionalism\, pathogen avoidance\, and competing tradeoffs during a global pandemic
DESCRIPTION:Traditionalism\, pathogen avoidance\, and competing tradeoffs during a global pandemic\nTheo Samore\nUniversity of Otago\nIndividuals vary in the extent to which they embrace their society’s traditions\, as well as in the perception of threats as salient and necessitating mitigation. Traditionalism and threat sensitivity may be linked if—over evolutionary time—traditions offered avenues for reliably addressing threats\, either through instrumental and/or ritual and cooperative benefits. Alternatively\, if traditionalists are attuned to group-destabilizing threats\, they may also exhibit greater threat sensitivity in certain domains. These possibilities – which are not mutually exclusive – suggest that greater traditionalism may associate with stronger mitigating responses toward some threats. However\, threat-avoidance motivations can conflict with competing priorities and epistemic commitments in the real world. The COVID-19 pandemic represented a moment in time in which people across the world undertook costly threat-mitigating behaviors\, providing an important test of the traditionalism-threat avoidance relationship under complex real-world conditions. We investigated the relationship between COVID-19 precautions\, traditionalism\, and perceptions of competing tradeoffs in both the U.S. and a large 27-country cross-cultural sample. Results indicated that\, across study sites\, traditionalism tended to positively correlate with behaviors intended to mitigate the threat of COVID-19. Further\, despite possible epistemic conflict between religion and science\, individuals tended to report engaging in both scientifically and religiously rooted precautions. Nevertheless\, at some study sites\, the relationship between public health precautions and traditionalism was suppressed by competing priorities\, such as lower trust in scientists and greater concerns about personal liberties.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/theo-samore-traditionalism-pathogen-avoidance-and-competing-tradeoffs-during-a-global-pandemic/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231113T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231113T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203541
CREATED:20230925T174330Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231115T031023Z
UID:6864-1699876800-1699882200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Zarin Machanda - Social aging in wild chimpanzees
DESCRIPTION:Social aging in wild chimpanzees\nZarin Machanda\nTufts University\, Departments of Anthropology and Biology\nHumans are living longer lives than ever before and so it is critical to understand the process of aging. It has become increasingly recognized that successful aging is not just about physical health but also about our social lives. Chimpanzees are our closest living relative and lead long and complex lives making them an ideal model to better understand our own patterns of social aging. In this talk\, Dr. Machanda will discuss the patterns of social aging in wild chimpanzees from her decades-long research project studying the Kanyawara chimpanzees living in Kibale National Park\, Uganda.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/zarin-machanda-social-aging-in-wild-chimpanzees/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231106T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231106T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203541
CREATED:20230925T174221Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231107T232918Z
UID:6861-1699272000-1699277400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Michael Wells - Exploration of human genetic and phenotypic diversity through cell villages
DESCRIPTION:Exploration of human genetic and phenotypic diversity through cell villages\nMichael Wells\nAssistant Professor\, UCLA Department of Human Genetics\nHuman genome variation contributes to diversity in neurodevelopmental outcomes and vulnerabilities; recognizing the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms will require scalable approaches. Here\, I will describe a ‘‘cell village’’ experimental platform we used to analyze genetic\, molecular\, and phenotypic heterogeneity across neural progenitor cells from 44 human donors cultured in a shared in vitro environment using algorithms (Dropulation and Census-seq) to assign cells and phenotypes to individual donors. Through rapid induction of human stem cell-derived neural progenitor cells\, measurements of natural genetic variation\, and CRISPR-Cas9 genetic perturbations\, we identified a common variant that regulates antiviral IFITM3 expression and explains most inter-individual variation in susceptibility to the Zika virus. We also detected expression QTLs corresponding to GWAS loci for brain traits and discovered novel disease-relevant regulators of progenitor proliferation and differentiation such as CACHD1. The village approach provides scalable ways to elucidate the effects of genes and genetic variation on cellular phenotypes\, and can help elucidate the mechanisms guiding brain development and associated diseases.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/michael-wells-exploration-of-human-genetic-and-phenotypic-diversity-through-cell-villages/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231030T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231030T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20230925T174018Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231107T233018Z
UID:6856-1698667200-1698672600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Katie Karlsgodt - Reward and Cognitive Function in Adolescent Psychopathology
DESCRIPTION:Reward and Cognitive Function in Adolescent Psychopathology\nKatie Karlsgodt\nUCLA Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry\nAdolescence is a time when exploration\, and even risk-taking\, can be considered an adaptive part of the typical developmental experience. This period of enhanced risk-taking allows for new learning\, particularly about the social world\, and is a critical part of establishing independence. Risk-taking is a complex behavior\, often considered to rely on many factors\, including reward sensitivity and reward behaviors\, response to punishment\, and executive function skills that allow the balancing of competing factors and the selection of choices. However\,  in addition to being a time of exploration and independence\, adolescence is also the period of onset for many psychological disorders including schizophrenia and depression. Many such disorders include alterations in both reward and executive function\, which has the potential to impact learning and exploration during this time\, with ultimate effects on social function\, and long term daily life function. In this talk\, I will address the existing literature in this area\, recent relevant work from my lab on reward function\, adolescence\, and psychopathology\, and future directions.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/katie-karlsgodt-reward-and-cognitive-function-in-adolescent-psychopathology/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231023T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231023T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20230925T173712Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231024T232020Z
UID:6851-1698062400-1698067800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Bridget Callaghan - Intergenerational impacts of adversity on mind-body health: pathways through interoception and the gut-brain axis
DESCRIPTION:Intergenerational impacts of adversity on mind-body health – pathways through interoception and the gut-brain axis\nBridget Callaghan\nAssistant Professor\, Department of Psychology\, UCLA\nChildren’s early experiences with caregivers impact their mental and physical health across the lifespan. Such early caregiving experiences can become biologically and psychologically embedded within an individual\, contributing to intergenerational transmission of adversity. My research program investigates the neurobiological mechanisms via which early caregiving experiences impact children’s mental and physical health\, and how those experiences may be transmitted to impact future generations. I will present data from several studies demonstrating how early life adversity gets ‘under the skin’ to influence children’s emotional health and physical health\, paying particular attention to gastrointestinal distress\, which is tightly connected to emotional wellbeing. Zooming in on the gastrointestinal and oral microbiomes\, I will show how adversity impacts biological systems tied to emotional and physical wellbeing. Finally\, I will show that mind-body adaptations to the state of pregnancy\, through changing interoception\, may be one pathway through which experiences of adversity are perpetuated across generations.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/bridget-callaghan-intergenerational-impacts-of-adversity-on-mind-body-health-pathways-through-interoception-and-the-gut-brain-axis/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231016T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231016T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20230921T222739Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231019T201655Z
UID:6846-1697457600-1697463000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Caleb Finch - The Gero-Exposome\, a life history approach to diversity of human longevity
DESCRIPTION:The Gero-Exposome\, a life history approach to diversity of human longevity\nCaleb Finch\, PhD\nARCO and Kieschnick Professor\, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology\, USC\nFrom egg to exit\, human life history is determined by environmental interactions with our genome (GxE). The Gero-Exposome provides a framework for analyzing GxE interactions with life style\, biomes\, and systemic factors. Lifespans difference of 15 years across the socio-economic status (SES) have corresponding differences in the onset of cardiovascular disease and dementia. Moreover\, SES influences the development of brain and vasculature\, by greater gestational exposure to air pollution and cigarette smoke in low SES. Multiple postnatal phases have environmental influences throughout the lifespan. As an experimental model for these complexities\, mice were gestationally exposed to air pollution. Young adults had more body fat and glucose intolerance\, while brains had lower levels of hypothalamic neuropeptides and neuronal stem cells in the hippocampus. These findings are relevant to the multi-generational stability of SES differences in health and lifespan\, for which the GxE basis is undefined.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/caleb-finch-the-gero-exposome-a-life-history-approach-to-diversity-of-human-longevity/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231002T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231002T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20230921T195335Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231019T201745Z
UID:6840-1696248000-1696253400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Barbara Natterson-Horowitz - The 600-million-year history of human affective disorder
DESCRIPTION:The 600-million-year history of human affective disorder\nBarbara Natterson-Horowitz\nDivision of Cardiology\, UCLA School of Medicine\nDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology\, UCLA\nDepartment of Human Evolutionary Biology\, Harvard University\nDepartment of Global Health and Social Medicine\, Harvard Medical School\nFifty years ago this October\, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three animal behaviorists based on the belief that the emerging field of ethology could transform our understanding of human biobehavioral health. Unfortunately\, the promise was not realized within the lifetimes of the scientists themselves. In the decades that followed\, advances in biological psychiatry challenged psychoanalysis as the singular source of explanatory insights into mental illness. Regrettably\, highly reductive biological approaches that lack a broader\, integrated organismal and ecological context have not led to much needed transformational knowledge. \nToday\, broadly comparative and ecologically-informed studies of animal behavior are revealing: 1) the ancient origins of human affective systems and affective disorders in the social brain networks of early social animals\, 2) the important links between brain biology promoting adaptive behavior in chronically subordinated animals and neurovegetative symptoms in depressed human beings\, and 3) evidence that withdrawn behavior\, anhedonia\, and reduced cognitive and motoric activity in chronic subordinates increases survival in certain individuals. Recent studies connecting social defeat to severe depression point\, once again\, to animal behavior as a source of insights into human mental health. In fact\, phylogenetic perspectives can provide much needed scaffolding on which to layer\, with context\, the rapidly growing body of reductive knowledge about the human brain in health and illness. \nDr Natterson-Horowitz’s lecture will first survey the historical and scientific settings in which both insights were recognized and overlooked. She will then present an up-to-date summary of insights into human affective disorders emerging at the intersection of behavioral ecology\, neurobiology\, psychopharmacology\, and evolutionary biology.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/barbara-natterson-horowitz-the-600-million-year-history-of-human-affective-disorder/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
CATEGORIES:2023,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220531T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220531T170000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220522T220936Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220522T220936Z
UID:6559-1654009200-1654016400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Joe Manson - Nine years of research on life history strategy and individual differences\, or: How I learned to start worrying about constructs and instruments
DESCRIPTION:This is a special BEC talk in honor of the retirement of one of BEC‘s core faculty members\, Joe Manson. Please note the special time! Refreshments and snacks on the balcony of the anthropology department will follow Joe’s talk.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/joe-manson-nine-years-of-research-on-life-history-strategy-and-individual-differences-or-how-i-learned-to-start-worrying-about-constructs-and-instruments/
CATEGORIES:2022,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220523T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220523T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T154639Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220522T220704Z
UID:6496-1653307200-1653312600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Dietrich Stout - The Evolution of Technology
DESCRIPTION:For better or worse\, humans are now one of the major causal forces acting on the earth’s biosphere. Many would point to technology as the reason\, but what exactly is technology? In this lecture\, I will develop an evolutionarily grounded definition of technology that highlights three key features: material production\, social collaboration\, and cultural reproduction. Using examples from my own lab’s studies of stone tool making\, I will argue that these features implicate a wide range of perceptual\, motor\, and cognitive capacities as well as multiple channels of cultural inheritance and biocultural evolutionary processes. This perspective blurs presumed distinctions between social and individual learning that have shaped formal modeling approaches to cultural evolution. In so doing it calls into question the idea that one key capacity\, event\, or evolutionary Rubicon initiated cumulative technological evolution and a pattern of sustained autocatalytic biocultural feedback in human evolution. This interpretation is consistent with growing paleoanthropological and archaeological evidence of the multi-lineal\, intermittent\, asynchronous course of human evolution\, and presents a view of technological evolution as a complex and contingent process spanning a scale from neurons to societies and beyond. Nevertheless\, some synthesis may be possible with respect to a smaller number of recurring processes and relationships. In this vein\, I advance a “Perceptual Motor Hypothesis” proposing that human technological cognition has been evolutionarily and developmentally constructed from ancient primate perceptual-motor systems for body awareness and engagement with the world. Testing such hypotheses will require a multidisciplinary and comparative approach to identify patterned relations between contexts\, mechanisms\, and functions across diverse technological systems.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/dietrich-stout-the-evolutionary-neuroscience-of-cultural-evolution/
CATEGORIES:2022,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220516T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220516T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T154513Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220511T035157Z
UID:6493-1652702400-1652707800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Richard Wrangham - Hunter-Gatherers\, Homo duplex and the Evolution of Human Groupishness
DESCRIPTION:Groupishness is a tendency to commit prosocial acts for which the pathway to\ncompensatory fitness benefits is unpredictable. It is unique to humans\, and its evolution is\nnot well understood. A difficulty is that the adaptive value of groupishness comes from\nindirect reciprocity\, which is hard to explain in societies that contain power asymmetries\nsuch that a dominant can appropriate resources at will. To date the only solution is Boehm’s\nproposal\, namely that morality was favored because allied males were selected to use\ncoercive behavior first to eliminate tyrants\, then subsequently to favor prosociality and\npunish antisociality. Using information on self-domestication\, a topic that Boehm did not\nexplore\, I present several tests of Boehm’s thesis. All are supportive\, while also modifying\nBoehm’s ideas. I conclude that a major increase in evolved groupishness began with the\norigin of Homo sapiens and the ability to execute tyrants. This process generated Homo\nduplex\, including the uniquely human tension between selfishness and duty seen in hunter-\ngatherers and other societies.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/richard-wrangham/
CATEGORIES:2022,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220509T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220509T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T154410Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220509T182728Z
UID:6490-1652097600-1652103000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Jaimie Krems - Tackling Friendship: Appraising\, Finding\, Getting\, and Keeping Partners
DESCRIPTION:Friends have recurrently provided social\, material\, and emotional support—helping humans meet a range of recurrent challenges tributary to fitness. But friendships are not the first type of relationship that comes to mind when thinking about research in social psychology or evolutionary social science. Moreover\, when friendships are the focus\, work typically foregrounds the friendship dyad. Taking an evolutionary approach suggests a different natural ecology for friendship psychology—one that implies the challenges of friendship are more and more complex than we might typically consider them to be. Perhaps\, then\, the challenges one must solve to reap the benefits of friendship should be thought of not (only) as two-person games\, so to speak\, but (also) as n-person games. I illustrate this by exploring several major friendship challenges—identifying good friends\, competing for friends\, and maintaining friendships. I also propose and test some of the possible means by which our social minds might meet these challenges\, toward ultimately maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of our sociality. \nhttps://www.kremslab.com/
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/jaime-krems-tackling-friendship-appraising-finding-getting-and-keeping-partners/
CATEGORIES:2022,Presentation,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220502T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220502T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T154256Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220429T045735Z
UID:6487-1651492800-1651498200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Sasha Kimel - Meatborne Xenophobia: Understanding When Disgust Fuels Outgroup Hate
DESCRIPTION:Given that animal-borne pathogens pose especially high disease risks and\, moreover\, that a growing body of research suggests that the evolved function of disgust is the avoidance of disease\, it is largely unsurprising that the consumption of non-normative meat would evoke strong disgust reactions. Yet\, it is largely unclear whether and when concerns about disease can also evoke negative reactions to third-parties who engage in such norm-violations. In a series of experiments\, participants in the U.S. were randomly assigned to learn about cuisine from another culture (i.e.\, fabricated and real) that contained a meat that was either relatively neutral (i.e.\, beef)\, disgusting due to disease threat (i.e.\, rat) or disgusting due to a combination of disease threat and the immorality of causing a cared-for animal harm (i.e.\, dog\, monkey). Our results suggest that disgust may only exacerbate negative judgements and behaviors towards third-parties when the disease threat also has a strong immorality component (e.g.\, eating of dogs but not rats) and\, moreover\, that this may increase depending on how cared-for the being is. Implications for theories on disgust\, compassion and third-party punishment will be addressed.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/sasha-kimel-meatborne-xenophobia-understanding-when-disgust-fuels-outgroup-hate/
CATEGORIES:2022,Presentation,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220425T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220425T233000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T154100Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220420T204926Z
UID:6484-1650888000-1650929400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Luke Premo - How Cultural Evolutionary Forces Affect Regional Variation in Structured Populations and the Archaeological Assemblages They Leave Behind
DESCRIPTION:Paleolithic archaeologists have employed expectations generated from models developed in evolutionary anthropology to aid in the investigation of the origins of high-fidelity cultural transmission. Based on the notion that copying error ought to yield high levels of between-group cultural variation under unbiased cultural transmission\, archaeologists have interpreted ostensibly “lower-than-expected” levels of cultural variation among regional archaeological assemblages as evidence of widespread conformist biased transmission. But a closer inspection of cultural evolutionary theory suggests the expectation that unbiased transmission yields high between-group differentiation holds only for a narrow\, idealized set of conditions that are likely to be violated in empirical cases. Additionally\, it is unclear how or if this expectation translates to time-averaged assemblages of artifacts even under special conditions. I’ve developed a relatively simple agent-based model of cultural transmission in a structured population to improve our understanding of how cultural evolutionary forces affect between-group variation in a selectively neutral discrete trait under a wide range of conditions. My experimental design addresses how intergroup transmission and copying error affect regional cultural variation under four different mechanisms of cultural transmission (unbiased\, vertical\, conformist\, or prestige biased) and two different models of copying error (finite or infinite variants). I quantify cultural differentiation not only between groups in a structured population but also between time-averaged assemblages of culture material. The results highlight three points: 1) there are many conditions—not just widespread conformity—in which one should expect relatively low variation among semi-\, or even completely\, isolated groups (and the archaeological assemblages they create through time) despite the effects of copying error\, 2) the way in which intergroup transmission and copying error affect between-group (and between-assemblage) variation varies among cultural transmission mechanisms\, and 3) time-averaging affects between-assemblage variation differently under different cultural transmission mechanisms. Considering these findings\, I propose a list of questions one should answer before attempting to infer mechanisms of cultural transmission from time-averaged archaeological assemblages. Answers to these questions will help researchers better match expectations of regional cultural variation with the empirical case at hand. \n  \nhttps://anthro.wsu.edu/faculty-and-staff/luke-premo/
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/luke-premo-how-cultural-evolutionary-forces-affect-regional-variation-in-structured-populations-and-the-archaeological-assemblages-they-leave-behind/
CATEGORIES:2022,Presentation,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220411T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220411T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T153443Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220414T202620Z
UID:6477-1649678400-1649683800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:James Higham - Insights into Life-History from the Cayo Santiago Rhesus Macaques
DESCRIPTION:We humans come from a diverse order\, the primates\, which make excellent model systems for studying the interface between the biological and the social. In this talk\, I focus on our long-running field studies of the rhesus macaques of Cayo Santiago\, Puerto Rico. Decades of individual-based demographic data allow us to explore variation in life history\, including the impacts of interbirth intervals and infant birth weights on infant survival\, and both the development and senescence of reproduction in the same individuals across the lifespan. Our studies leverage behavioral observations\, cognitive experiments\, physiological measures\, genomic and transcriptomic data from blood and tissues\, measurements of soft-tissues and skeletons\, microbiome samples\, and more. I show how long-term integrative study allows us to explore the interactions between the biological and the social from two perspectives: bottom-up and top-down. From the bottom-up perspective\, we are beginning to ask how variation in the genome and epigenome\, via the transcriptome\, constructs cellular\, tissue- and organ-level biology in individuals\, and in turn\, how individual-level behaviors structure societies and populations. From the top-down perspective\, we study how variation in the social environment can get under the skin and impact health and disease. I finish by discussing the Anthropocene\, and by demonstrating the top-down effects of climate change-linked natural disasters on rhesus macaque societies\, and on individual health via effects on the transcriptome. Combining approaches from behavioral ecology\, physiology\, quantitative genetics\, genomics and transcriptomics\, computer vision\, and comparative psychology\, this talk is part demonstration of the value of integrative research\, and part love-letter to long-term field studies. \n 
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/james-higham-insights-into-life-history-from-the-cayo-santiago-rhesus-macaques/
CATEGORIES:2022,Presentation,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220404T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220404T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T153237Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220420T214526Z
UID:6474-1649073600-1649079000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Kelsey McCune - Space Use\, Exploratory Behavior and Rapid Range Expansion in Great-Tailed Grackles
DESCRIPTION:Humans are rapidly changing the natural world\, leading to decreasing native fauna and increasing non-native fauna.  Problematic species range expansions are occurring across the globe\, but not all species are able to become established outside of their original range.  It is still unclear which characteristics facilitate successful invasions or native species persistence in human-modified environments.  One hypothesis is that variation in behavior may be important when certain individuals possess traits that make them more likely to succeed when venturing into new habitats and outcompeting heterospecifics.  For example\, variation in the ability (movement) and motivation (exploratory tendency) to encounter conspecifics and novel food sources could facilitate range expansions.  However\, no previous research has compared measures of exploration to the natural movement behavior of individuals along the range of a currently invading species.  In this talk I will discuss my research on movement and exploratory behaviors in a species that has rapidly expanded its range in the U.S.\, the great-tailed grackle. I consider whether individuals consistently differ in their movement behavior such that it can be considered an inherent individual trait\, whether movement relates to performance on an exploration task\, and whether movement and exploration differ between grackles in the center of the range and those on the invasion front.  Invasive species are implicated as a leading cause of biodiversity loss\, so this research will facilitate a better understanding of the importance of these behavioral characteristics in predicting potential invasions in other systems. \n 
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/kelsey-mccune-space-use-exploratory-behavior-and-rapid-range-expansion-in-great-tailed-grackles/
CATEGORIES:2022,Presentation,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220328T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220328T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20220323T152929Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220323T152929Z
UID:6471-1648468800-1648474200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Lisa O'Bryan - Communication and the Coordination of Collective Behavior in Non-human and Human Social Groups
DESCRIPTION:Lisa O’Bryan\, Rice University \nIn order to obtain social benefits\, individuals must remain cohesive\, coordinate their behavior\, and collectively process information. The field of collective behavior focuses on understanding how group-wide properties such as these emerge from the interactions of many individuals. Most studies of collective behavior examine how coordination is achieved through visual cues about others’ positions and behavior. However\, in many complex social and ecological environments\, communication can be critical for achieving successful outcomes since many signals have evolved to advertise location\, express motivational state and share information. My research focuses on how vocal communication both influences\, and is influenced by\, individual and group-wide properties\, with the aim of better understanding the behavioral mechanisms underlying the successful (and unsuccessful) functioning of social groups. I study this topic using technology to obtain detailed\, continuous measurements of individual behaviors and interactions in both non-human and human social groups. In this talk I will review my work using wearable dataloggers to study how vocalizations influence the collective movements of domesticated herds and wild baboons. I will also discuss current studies focused on the role conversational turn-taking plays in the decision-making and collective intelligence of human teams. The long-term goal of my research program is to gain new insights into the function and evolution of communication systems involved in the mediation of collective behaviors and how we can engineer communication systems within our own societies to produce more favorable group-wide outcomes.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/lisa-obryan-communication-and-the-coordination-of-collective-behavior-in-non-human-and-human-social-groups/
CATEGORIES:2022,Presentation,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220307T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220307T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211129T172927Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220304T051853Z
UID:6379-1646654400-1646659800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Federico Rossano - Interacting like a human being: a developmental and comparative perspective on calibrating requests
DESCRIPTION:In his paper on the “human interaction engine”\, Levinson famously asserted that\, in social interaction\, people’s responses “are to actions and intentions\, not to behaviors” (2006: 45). Indeed human beings attribute intentions/goals to the production of signals and parsing other’s signals means simulating others’ mental worlds\, at least to some degree.  But how do speakers calibrate their interactional moves in first position so that they are more likely to elicit their preferred response? Which variables do they take into account? \nIn this talk I present observational and experimental data on how human (children and adults) and non-human primates (chimpanzees\, bonobos and orangutans) calibrate requests for actions and for objects. I will discuss the roles of prospection\, entitlement and accountability in the calibration of requests and outline to what degree non-human primates share with humans cognitive abilities that allow for a flexible assessment of when\, how and to whom to deliver requests. I will also show where the critical differences lie. In doing so\, I will show what it means to interact like a human being. \nFederico Rossano\nUCSD Cognitive Science\nhttps://cogsci.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/federico-rossano.html
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/frederico-rossano/
CATEGORIES:2022,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220228T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220228T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211129T172802Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220211T170615Z
UID:6376-1646049600-1646055000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Elizabeth Hobson - Dominance hierarchies\, fight decisions\, and social support as windows into animal social cognition
DESCRIPTION:Elizabeth Hobson\nUniversity of Cincinnati\nhttp://hobsonresearch.com/
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/elizabeth-hobson/
CATEGORIES:2022,Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220214T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220214T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211129T172649Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220119T182626Z
UID:6373-1644840000-1644845400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Helen Davis - Culture\, Cultural Change\, and Cognitive Development
DESCRIPTION:What does cognitive development look like in a world without schools or formally educated parents or communities? What if our most fundamental measures of cognitive performance were influenced by small amounts of schooling or by having parents\, siblings or others who attended schools in one’s household or community? Growing evidence suggests that the human mind is shaped by the socially and culturally incentivized institutions it is exposed to during our unusually long childhood. Yet\, many contemporary theories of early learning capacities and cognition are drawn from samples where formal schooling\, a prolific cultural institution\, has been nearly ubiquitous for at least a century. In such novel environments\, the impact of formal schooling on cognition and learning can easily be confused with species-wide maturational processes. This talk will discuss research focused on fundamental aspects of cognition and the institutions and cultural transitions shaping them using findings from two unique\, ongoing studies in Amazonia\, Bolivia and in the Namib Desert of Namibia and Angola. Additionally\, this talk will address growing challenges associated with cross-cultural research\, as well as the need for a conscientious commitment to participant communities. \nHelen Davis\nHarvard University\nhttps://helen-elizabeth-davis.com/
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/helen-davis/
CATEGORIES:Upcoming Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220131T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220131T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220124T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220124T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220110T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220110T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220103T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220103T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211129T171521Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220106T235313Z
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211129T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211129T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211003T163754Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220102T180155Z
UID:6310-1638187200-1638192600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Dominic Cram - Cooperation\, health and ageing: lessons from weaver-birds\, meerkats and honeyguides
DESCRIPTION:Cooperation in the natural world can\, at first glance\, appear puzzling: why should an animal cooperate when doing so is costly\, and would benefit a competitor? In this talk\, I will address this question by investigating links between cooperation and animal health using field studies of wild birds and mammals. I will first test whether cooperatively breeding societies (whereby ‘helpers’ forego breeding and instead assist raising others’ young) are maintained because cooperation lightens overall workloads\, improves health\, slows ageing\, and extends lifespans. I will focus on my studies of white-browed sparrow weavers (Plocepasser mahali) and meerkats (Suricata suricatta) in the Kalahari Desert. I will then contrast these findings with inter-species cooperation in greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator) in the Mozambican wilderness. In a remarkable human-wildlife mutualism\, these birds actively call to humans searching for honey and lead them to the location of bees’ nests in return for a beeswax meal. I will explore how this unique case of human- wildlife cooperation is resilient to cheating honeyguides that scrounge a free piece of wax\, and whether honeyguide cooperation is related to variation in individual health. Overall\, these results suggest that cooperation can influence\, and be driven by\, variation in animal health\, but that these effects must be viewed in the light of other ecological and social factors.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/dominic-cram-cooperation-health-and-ageing-lessons-from-weaver-birds-meerkats-and-honeyguides/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211122T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211122T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211118T014552Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220102T180221Z
UID:6337-1637582400-1637587800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Bernard Koch - White Supremacist Trees in An Academic Forest: Does Anybody Hear Them?
DESCRIPTION:Bernard Koch\, UCLA Sociology\nIn this paper\, we quantify the enduring legacy of scientific racism both within academia and online. Hereditarian arguments correlating race and IQ have been used to justify regressive social policies since the 1950s\, and this literature remains active within academia today. We characterize a tight collaboration community of authors promoting these arguments within academia over decades\, and show that they are diverse with respect to gender\, age\, race\, and geography. Moreover\, while their papers are cited at lower rates than similar psychology papers\, we find that they have much broader public engagement\, as measured through Google searches\, Reddit\, and other social media platforms. Possible interventions for academics to better contain influential pseudoscience are discussed.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/bernard-koch-white-supremacist-trees-in-an-academic-forest-does-anybody-hear-them/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211115T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211115T120000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211004T170000Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220102T180246Z
UID:6316-1636977600-1636977600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Melissa Emery Thompson - The Gray Ape: What Can Chimpanzees Tell Us About Human Aging?
DESCRIPTION:Melissa Emery Thompson \nEvolutionary Anthropology\, University of New Mexico \nGiven their close evolutionary relationship to humans and lifespans that can extend into their 60s\, chimpanzees are a uniquely informative comparative model for the evolution of human aging. Here\, I will review early findings of the first focused study of aging in wild chimpanzees. Chimpanzees share key similarities in physiological\, physical\, and social aging with humans\, but they show a remarkable lack of evidence for aging pathologies. This evidence helps support and contextualize recent cross-cultural evidence from humans which suggests that common diseases of aging may be novel products of post-industrial environments.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/melissa-emery-thompson-the-gray-ape-what-can-chimpanzees-tell-us-about-human-aging/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211108T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211108T133000
DTSTAMP:20260417T203542
CREATED:20211003T163656Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211118T021218Z
UID:6307-1636372800-1636378200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:David Raichlen - Evolutionary links between physical activity and brain health
DESCRIPTION:Recent work suggests physical activity can have important beneficial effects on the aging brain\, however the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. An evolutionary-neuroscience approach may help us better understand these mechanisms and can provide a foundation for developing novel interventions to improve brain aging. Here\, we suggest that\, from an evolutionary perspective\, physical activity mainly occurred during foraging\, which combines aerobic activity with cognitively demanding tasks (e.g.\, spatial navigation and executive cognitive functions). Thus\, mechanisms linked to neuroplasticity\, including hippocampal neurogenesis\, may be triggered by physical activity as a way to enhance cognitive needs during foraging tasks. If correct\, simultaneous physical and cognitive challenges may lead to the strongest brain benefits. Using this evolutionary approach to brain health\, we can form a foundation for novel interventions to improve brain aging today.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/david-raichlen-evolutionary-links-between-physical-activity-and-brain-health/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR