Collaborative Research: Collective intelligence and social brain evolution in ants

合作研究：蚂蚁的集体智慧和社交大脑进化

• 批准号: 1354193
• 负责人: Corrie Moreau
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: Field Museum of Natural History
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-15 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1354193&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Collective; intelligence; social

Due to its extraordinary complexity, research on non-human animals will be necessary to efficiently explore the design of the human brain. A central problem in understanding the origin of the human brain concerns the role of social life and the demands it places on the brain to generate adaptive behavior. As humans evolved complex societies, it is thought that the brain increased in volume to enable advanced cognition. Social insects are outstanding models to examine brain evolution in light of social complexity. This research project employs ants as an ideal model system to analyze the relationship between sociality and brain evolution because different species form colonies that vary in size and the degree of complexity. This research will also help us understand how exceptionally small brains are able to process complex social information. The project will analyze differences in the size and organization of worker brains, and their metabolic costs to determine if complex social life has increased the efficiency of energy use in the brain. The project will train graduate and undergraduate who will become skilled in designing scientific studies and will acquire techniques that enable brains to be imaged. Students will also learn data analysis, and scientific writing and publication. The researchers will develop a curriculum to enrich the education of K-12 students by introducing them to the study of behavior and neuroscience. The researchers will recruit diverse participants from the Laboratory Schools of the University of Chicago to encourage minority students to become activity engaged in science. The project will broadly support science outreach in the Chicago STEM Pipeline, Arizona Assurance, Brain Awareness, and Boston Upward Bound programs to address the critical national need to improve science education and train the next generation of scientists.To determine how social complexity has influenced brain evolution, the researchers will quantify neuronal metabolic requirements, neuropil investment and scaling, behavioral plasticity, and synaptic organization in brain regions considered key to cognitive function. Pairs of species representative of major ant subfamilies that accentuate variability in social complexity will form the sample groups. The researchers will: 1) quantify energetic requirements of functionally specialized neuropil using cytochrome oxidase staining to assess ATP use; 2) determine if brain development is experience-dependent; 3) quantify synaptic complexes associated with cognition; and 4) couple behavioral performance with neural and metabolic metrics. The researchers will determine neuron number and size and variation in peripheral sensory structures, and examine brain compartment scaling patterns. Controlling for phylogeny, analyses infer how independent evolutionary events associated with collective intelligence shaped brain evolution. All original images will be freely available upon publication, in the absence of copyright issues. Organismal data (specimen and colony collection data, phenotypic data, etc.) will be maintained in individual labs, and will be made freely available upon request. Voucher specimens will be deposited in the ant collection of the Field Museum.

由于其非凡的复杂性，需要对非人类动物进行研究，以有效地探索人脑的设计。 理解人脑的起源的一个核心问题是社会生活的作用及其在大脑上产生适应性行为的作用。 随着人类发展的复杂社会，人们认为大脑的体积增加以实现高级认知。 社交昆虫是根据社会复杂性检查大脑进化的出色模型。 该研究项目采用蚂蚁作为理想的模型系统来分析社会性和大脑进化之间的关系，因为不同的物种形成了菌落的大小和复杂程度。 这项研究还将帮助我们了解异常小的大脑如何能够处理复杂的社会信息。 该项目将分析工人大脑规模和组织的差异，以及它们的代谢成本，以确定复杂的社会生活是否提高了大脑能源利用的效率。 该项目将培训毕业生和本科生，他们将熟练设计科学研究，并获得使大脑能够成像的技术。 学生还将学习数据分析以及科学写作和出版。研究人员将通过向他们介绍行为和神经科学的研究来开发一项课程，以丰富K-12学生的教育。 研究人员将招募芝加哥大学实验室学校的不同参与者，以鼓励少数族裔学生开始从事科学的活动。 The project will broadly support science outreach in the Chicago STEM Pipeline, Arizona Assurance, Brain Awareness, and Boston Upward Bound programs to address the critical national need to improve science education and train the next generation of scientists.To determine how social complexity has influenced brain evolution, the researchers will quantify neuronal metabolic requirements, neuropil investment and scaling, behavioral plasticity, and synaptic organization in brain regions considered key to cognitive function. 代表着强调社会复杂性变异性的主要蚂蚁亚家族的物种对将形成样本组。 研究人员将：1）使用细胞色素氧化酶染色来评估ATP的使用来量化功能专业的神经肽的能量要求； 2）确定大脑发育是否取决于经验； 3）量化与认知相关的突触复合物； 4）将行为表现与神经和代谢指标进行。 研究人员将确定周围感觉结构的神经元数量以及大小以及变化，并检查大脑室缩放模式。 控制系统发育，分析推断出与集体智力形状进化相关的独立进化事件。在没有版权问题的情况下，所有原始图像将在出版后免费获得。 有机数据（标本和菌落收集数据，表型数据等）将在单个实验室中维护，并应要求免费提供。 优惠券标本将存放在野外博物馆的蚂蚁收藏中。