Individual variation, plasticity, and learning in human brain evolution

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The human ability to create and use technology far surpasses that of any other species. How did our advanced technological skills evolve, and what can this evolutionary perspective tell us about the basis of modern human technological learning? A team of investigators from Georgia State University and Emory University will use a multidisciplinary approach, integrating expertise in neuroscience, informatics, anthropology, biomedical engineering, and educational psychology, to address three main questions: (1) What aspects of human brain connectivity show greatest variability across individuals? (2) Are these highly variable regions responsive to real-world technological skill training, and, if so, what are the factors mediating individual differences in response to this training? (3) Which aspects of the underlying brain networks are present in humans but not our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, and therefore implicated as a likely substrate for unique human abilities for technological learning? The findings will have the potential to reveal the functional significance of any unique features of human brain organization that may be related to the learning and transfer of complex technological skills, thereby expanding knowledge of ourselves and of the brain with implications for STEM education. The award is from the Integrated Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems program, with funding from the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports fundamental research that advances the research literature on STEM learning, and the SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (SMA) program. The investigators hypothesize that the ability to learn complex technological skills evolved by means of adaptations to prefrontal-parietal-temporal association networks, and that the high individual variability of these regions is due to selection for increased plasticity and protracted development, allowing for a greater input of individual experience, social learning, and cultural context. The researchers will examine human brain morphology and connectivity before, during, and after two STEM learning experiences (tool making and computer programming) and relate the pre-post changes in the brain to differences in connectivity in humans and chimpanzees. The human brain map produced will also provide a normative foundation to support and stimulate research on other questions, such as neural predictors of individual variation in behavior or in disease states). Finally, the team will develop an open source analysis tool, voxel-based connectivity, that will help the field by closing a gap in current neuroimaging methodology.