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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20080107T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20080107T000000
DTSTAMP:20201013T004836Z
CREATED:20200922T213929Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T004836Z
UID:4060-1199664000-1199664000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Roger Sullivan - Revealing the paradox of drug reward in human evolution
DESCRIPTION:Roger Sullivan: CSU Sacramento\, Anthropology\, and UC Davis School of Medicine\,\nPsychiatry and Behavioral SciencesNeurobiological models of drug abuse propose that drug use is initiated and maintained by\nrewarding feedback mechanisms. However\, most commonly used drugs are plant neurotoxins\nthat evolved to punish\, not reward\, consumption by animal herbivores. Reward models therefore\nimplicitly assume an evolutionary mismatch between recent drug-profligate environments\nand a relatively drug-free past in which a reward center\, incidentally vulnerable to neurotoxins\,\ncould evolve. In contrast\, emerging insights from plant evolutionary ecology and the genetics\nof hepatic enzymes\, particularly cytochrome P450\, indicate that animal and hominid taxa have\nbeen exposed to plant toxins throughout their evolution. Specifically\, evidence of conserved\nfunction\, stabilizing selection\, and population-specific selection of human cytochrome P450\ngenes indicate recent evolutionary exposure to plant toxins\, including those that affect animal\nnervous systems. Thus\, the human propensity to seek out and consume plant neurotoxins\nis a paradox with far-reaching implications for current drug-reward theory. We sketch some\npotential resolutions of the paradox\, including the possibility that humans may have evolved\nto counter-exploit plant neurotoxins. Resolving the paradox of drug reward will require a\nsynthesis of ecological and neurobiological perspectives of drug seeking and use.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/Sullivan.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/roger-sullivan-revealing-the-paradox-of-drug-reward-in-human-evolution/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20080114T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20080114T000000
DTSTAMP:20201013T004835Z
CREATED:20200922T213929Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T004835Z
UID:4061-1200268800-1200268800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Afzal Upal - Do we have religion because evolution favors opportunistic learners?
DESCRIPTION:Afzal Upal: OccidentalCognitive anthropologists such as Pascal Boyer have argued that religious concepts are minimally\ncounterintuitive and that this gives them mnemic advantages. I will ague that people have the memory\narchitecture that results in such concepts being more memorable because it makes them better learners\nwhich gives them an evolutionary edge over their competitors.  I will show how such benefits emerge in the\nreal-time processing of comprehending narratives such as folk tales. This model suggests that memorability\nis not an inherent property of a concept as Boyer appears to assume; rather it is a property of the concept\, the\ncontext in which the concept is presented\, and the background knowledge that the comprehendor possesses\nabout the concept. The model predicts how memorability of a concept should change if the context containing\nthe concept were changed. I will also present the results of experiments carried out to test these predictions.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/Upal_Paper.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/afzal-upal-do-we-have-religion-because-evolution-favors-opportunistic-learners/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20080128T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20080128T000000
DTSTAMP:20201013T004835Z
CREATED:20200922T214023Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201013T004835Z
UID:4062-1201478400-1201478400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Mark Collard - Risk and technological innovation in small-scale societies
DESCRIPTION:Mark Collard: Simon Fraser University Archaeology
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/mark-collard-risk-and-technological-innovation-in-small-scale-societies/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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