Collaborative Research: NCS: Foundations of learning: individual variation, plasticity, and evolution

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Humans have remarkably plastic brains; adaptations for learning are perhaps the hallmark evolutionary trait of our species. This project will examine learning-related aspects of brain organization in great ape species that are close evolutionary relatives of humans – bonobos and chimpanzees – using noninvasive tests and archived brain samples and images. The work focuses on two learned skills that were important factors in human evolution: tool use and language. One analysis will use archived brain images from previous studies combined with new behavioral tests of skill learning. Apes will receive training in evolutionarily-relevant, naturalistic tool use skills, and the investigators will measure how individual variation in brain organization is related to skill learning. Another analysis will examine brain organization in apes that have and have not undergone training to use language-like systems, including hand signs and pictogram boards. The investigators will examine how language training is related to learning-related changes in the brain. Results are expected to shed light on probable brain changes during the evolution of the human species, provide insight on neural mechanisms of real-world skill learning in primate species closely related to humans, and facilitate understanding of how individual variation in brain structure is related to individual variation in behavior and cognition. This project will use a cross-disciplinary, comparative, integrative approach to examine how individual variation in brain anatomy influences learning trajectories in the context of real-world, evolutionarily relevant skills. It also examines the interaction between acquired, plastic changes in the brain resulting from learning during an individual’s lifetime, and evolved, heritable changes resulting from natural selection across generations. The project brings together methodological and theoretical approaches from neuroscience and neuroimaging, anthropology, archaeology, and animal behavior. Identification of plastic changes resulting from language training in great apes will provide a new window on the evolution of language circuits in our own species and will for the first time add crucial neurobiological information to landmark, long-running language-training studies in apes. Additionally, individual variation in chimpanzee and bonobo brain anatomy will be linked to differences in learning trajectories in two evolutionarily-relevant, real-world skills: simple stone tool knapping and nut cracking. Together, this research will provide important new insight on brain changes underlying acquisition of learned skills both on the timescale of individual lifetimes (plasticity) and the timescale of evolved, species-level change (adaptation).This project is funded by the Integrated Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems (NCS) program, which is jointly supported by the Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.