Social Brain

La struttura delle comunicazioni, che già Marx prese in esame, è ormai ad un livello altissimo di integrazione mondiale: lo sviluppo dei traffici e delle reti informatiche, la conservazione dei dati in memorie sempre più diffuse nella società, l'elaborazione interattiva di questi dati, in tempo reale o differito, quindi il raggiungimento di una indifferenza spaziale e temporale nella comunicazione fra uomini, tutto ciò fa parte della maturazione di quel cervello collettivo che la società di domani saprà utilizzare al meglio per un nuovo e inimmaginabile balzo; e il risultato sarà così potente da potersi paragonare a quello raggiunto dall'umanità con il passaggio dalla raccolta in natura alla produzione cosciente di cibo e manufatti.

The social brain hypothesis posits that social complexity is the primary driver of primate cognitive complexity, and that social pressures ultimately led to the evolution of the large human brain. Although this idea has been supported by studies indicating positive relationships between relative brain and/or neocortex size and group size, reported effects of different social and mating systems are highly conflicting. Here, we use a much larger sample of primates, more recent phylogenies, and updated statistical techniques, to show that brain size is predicted by diet, rather than multiple measures of sociality, after controlling for body size and phylogeny. Specifically, frugivores exhibit larger brains than folivores. Our results call into question the current emphasis on social rather than ecological explanations for the evolution of large brains in primates and evoke a range of ecological and developmental hypotheses centred on frugivory, including spatial information storage, ex...

The emotions originated in the aesthetic experience, i.e. observing and assessing an artwork, are often described as object-related, as opposed to emotions evoked by outcomes. There is, however, little understanding across disciplines of what these constitute, what mechanisms support them, and how they should be studied. In this paper, I suggest that research on social emotions may throw some light on these issues. I propose that the emotions, feelings, and judgements used to engage socially with others have been co-opted in the appraisal of visual art. That is, aesthetic emotions may derive from social emotions, which in turn co-evolved with human social behaviours and cooperative strategies. This supports the notion that aesthetic emotions are not 'objective' or independent emotions arising from the observed object but emerge from the interaction of subject, context, and object, and are highly influenced by the subject's knowledge and previous experience. A social cognition approach offers a new framework for empirical and theoretical research on the evolution and function of aesthetic emotions.

The concept of ‘social brain’ is a hybrid, located somewhere in between politically motivated philosophical speculation about the mind and its place in the social world, and recently emerged inquiries into cognition, selfhood, development, etc., returning to some of the founding insights of social psychology but embedding them in a neuroscientific framework. In this paper I try to reconstruct a philosophical tradition for the social brain, a ‘Spinozist’ tradition which locates the brain within the broader network of relations, including social relations. This tradition runs from Spinoza to Lev Vygotsky in the early 20th century, and on to Gilles Deleuze, Toni Negri and Paolo Virno in recent European philosophy, as a new perspective on the brain. The concept of social brain that is articulated in this reconstruction – some early-20th century Soviet neuropsychologists spoke of socialism and the cortex as being “on the same path” – overcomes distinctions between Continental thought and the philosophy of mind, and possibly gives a new metaphysical framework for social cognition.

The brain in its plasticity and inherent ‘sociality’ can be proclaimed and projected as a revolutionary organ – a kind of ‘wonder tissue’ writ in revolutionary, transformative text. Far from the old reactions which opposed the authenticity of political theory and praxis to the dangerous naturalism of ‘cognitive science’, with images of men in white coats, the RAND Corporation or military LSD experiments, recent decades have shown us some of the creative potentiality of the ‘social brain’ (Vygotsky, Negri, Virno – each of whom is deliberately renewing with a Spinozist tradition in which old forms of conservatism, including hermeneutics, Heideggerianism and other perpetuations of a nature-culture, Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften divide are discarded). Of course, the gleefulness with which the brain is proclaimed as revolutionary – including in its immateriality, a paradox for a doctrine which invokes a material organ – masks some underlying problems. For one, who says the brain – “the book which reads itself,” in Diderot’s words – is necessarily revolutionary? Plasticity doesn’t have to mean plasticity ‘for good’; it could mean an openness to conformism or being shaped – including being swallowed into a ‘group mind’? While I don’t propose to definitively answer all these objections, I seek here to connect reflection on the social brain with what one might call the project of a politics of affect(s), partly inspired by Guattari’s idea of a “production of subjectivity.”

In recent years, a proliferation of books about empathy, cooperation, and prosocial behaviours (Brooks, 2011a) have significantly influenced the discourse of the life sciences and reversed consolidated views of nature as a place only for competition and aggression. In this article I describe the recent contribution of three disciplines: moral psychology (Jonathan Haidt), primatology (Frans de Waal) and the neuroscience of morality, to the present transformation of biology and evolution into direct sources of moral phenomena, a process here named the ‘moralization of biology’. I conclude by addressing the ambivalent status of this constellation of authors, for whom today ‘morality comes naturally’: I explore both the attractiveness of their message, and the problematic epistemological assumptions of their research programs in the light of new discoveries in developmental and molecular biology.

The question of language development and origin is a subject that is vital to our understanding of what it means to be human. This is reflected in the large range of academic disciplines that are dedicated to the subject. Language development has in particular been related to studies in cognitive capacity and the ability for mind reading, often termed a theory of mind. The Social Brain Hypothesis has been the only attempt to correlate a cognitive scale of complexity incorporating a theory of mind and intentionality orders to the archaeological record and hominin phylogeny. However, a method is still lacking that allows a correlation of the orders of intentionality (and by inference a theory of mind and language development) to the archaeological signatures that represent the physical expression of hominin behaviour. This paper is primarily concerned with introducing a new theoretical perspective – termed the identity model – which facilitates such a correlation between a scale of cognitive acuity, hominin behaviour through the archaeological record and subsequently language development within an evolutionary context.

The tight association of the human body with trillions of colonizing microbes that we observe today is the result of a long evolutionary history. Only very recently have we started to understand how this symbiosis also affects brain function and behavior. In this hypothesis and theory article, we propose how host-microbe associations potentially influenced mammalian brain evolution and development. In particular, we explore the integration of human brain development with evolution, symbiosis, and RNA biology, which together represent a “social triangle” that drives human social behavior and cognition. We argue that, in order to understand how inter-kingdom communication can affect brain adaptation and plasticity, it is inevitable to consider epigenetic mechanisms as important mediators of genome-microbiome interactions on an individual as well as a transgenerational time scale. Finally, we unite these interpretations with the hologenome theory of evolution. Taken together, we propose a tighter integration of neuroscience fields with host-associated microbiology by taking an evolutionary perspective.

The primary aim of the research project was to develop a theory and model of the evolutionary and revolutionary phases of change in human cultures valid from prehistory to the present. To do this satisfactorily the first stage was to clarify what it is to be human. Consequently, the thesis is as much concerned with human evolution as it is with theories of culture.

Its originality derives from the adoption of a radical theory of living and cognition devised by biologists and neuroscientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, referred to as biology of cognition (BoC), or autopoietic theory.

Despite claims to the contrary, mainstream theories of evolution do not provide a satisfactory explanation of how genes, brain, body and culture co-evolve. Maturana and Varela already provide such a theory, and one might venture to say that this is what they have dedicated themselves to explaining these past 50 years or so. One of the central aims of the project has been to bring it into the light to compare against extant theories of human evolution, cognition and cultural change.

One of the significant outcomes is the articulation of a theory of human evolution that is independent of empirical evidence, and which, therefore, can be used to guide interpretations of fossil and artefactual discoveries, the latter of which are used to ascertain the presence, absence and kind of culture from prehistory to the present.

This part of the “Grundrisse” has been object of many different interpretations of what Marx really wanted to say with “general intellect”. Most of these interpretations understand it like a synonym of swarm intelligence or stigmergy. In other word, types of distributed intelligence that emerges from interaction of parts of the system which operate independently, non-systemic, only on the basis of some very elementary instructions that can be executed at the individual level.
I immediately say what I think: intelligence is always “swarm” and does not exist a non-diffused intelligence. Nevertheless, the Marxian general intellect it is another thing and it is not “swarm” because it is the science of the system, not the intelligence of the system.
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NOTE: I originally wrote this article in Italian and then I tried to translate it into English as best I could, in order to give a chance to read also to those who do not speak Italian. Unfortunately my English is far from being correct, then it is very likely that there are errors. I apologize for this in advance.

The brain in its plasticity and inherent ‘sociality’ can be proclaimed and projected as a revolutionary organ. Far from the old reactions which opposed the authenticity of political theory and praxis to the dangerous naturalism of ‘cognitive science’ (with images of men in white coats, the RAND Corporation or military LSD experiments), recent decades have shown us some of the potentiality of the social brain (Vygotsky, Negri, Virno). Is the brain somehow inherently a utopian topos? If in some earlier papers I sought to defend naturalism against these reactions, here I consider a new challenge: the recently emerged disciplines of neuronormativity, which seek in their own way to overcome the nature-normativity divide. This is the task of a materialist brain theory today.

Molti – è noto – sono coloro che si chiedono a quale scopo e con quale spirito 5,8 milioni di persone hanno dato vita a questo strano cervello sociale che è Wikipedia. Senza particolari soddisfazioni, senza guadagno, senza gloria, per il puro gusto di collaborare a un progetto collettivo. Probabilmente la risposta più vicina al vero è che esse hanno incominciato a "produrre" da uomini per altri uomini invece che da alienati per il Capitale.

As hundreds of so-called " psychotherapies " have been foisted onto the public, all claiming to treat " mental illness, " newer understandings of how the human brain actually works and the processes which drive the formations of mentation that we refer to as " the mind, " demand a reassessment of what exactly we are referring to by the term " mental illness " and what kinds of intervention would be feasible in both the prevention of and recovery from cognitive and behavioral disorder.

We review evolutionary explanations for three major puzzles of the human mind: altruism, religiosity, and self-enhancement. Human altruism reaches beyond reciprocity or close-kin care readily explained by game theory and genetic kin selection. Group selection is widely seen as too weak to lead to substantial altruism as it struggles to contain selfishness favored by within-group selection. Yet, reciprocity and punishment leverage the effectiveness of altruism within a group, and genuine altruism is testified to be weak, leaving scope for explanation even by a force as weak as group selection. Moralistic religious culture appears tightly linked to altruism, yet the fitness advantage of a defector within a religious society makes it difficult to conceive religion or related genetic predisposition as an evolutionarily stable strategy. Self-enhancement has direct links to altruism and religiosity, leading to warm-glow altruistic contributions and increased receptiveness to comforting narratives of heavenly justice. Suggested intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of self-enhancement do not detail how the trait should be competitive against more direct behavioral adjustments that yield similar personal benefits but avoid the fitness costs of misperception. We explain religion and bias as imperfect ad hoc evolutionary adaptations rather than perfect evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS). The scant time available for fine-tuning the mind since the emergence of higher cognitive capabilities means near-perfect traits were unlikely to emerge. Instead, the extraordinary evolutionary pressure induced by the rapidly evolving environment favored a broad range of genetic novelties despite extra costs.

The social brain hypothesis proposes that enlarged brains have evolved in response to the increasing cognitive demands that complex social life in larger groups places on primates and other mammals. However, this reasoning can be challenged by evidence that brain size has decreased in the evolutionary transitions from solitary to social larger groups in the case of Neolithic humans and some eusocial insects. Different hypotheses can be identified in the literature to explain this reduction in brain size. We evaluate some of them from the perspective of recent approaches to cognitive science, which support the idea that the basis of cognition can span over brain, body, and environment. Here we show through a minimal cognitive model using an evolutionary robotics methodology that the neural complexity, in terms of neural entropy and degrees of freedom of neural activity, of smaller-brained agents evolved in social interaction is comparable to the neural complexity of larger-brained agents evolved in solitary conditions. The nonlinear time series analysis of agents' neural activity reveals that the decoupled smaller neural network is intrinsically lower dimensional than the decoupled larger neural network. However, when smaller-brained agents are interacting, their actual neural complexity goes beyond its intrinsic limits achieving results comparable to those obtained by larger-brained solitary agents. This suggests that the smaller-brained agents are able to enhance their neural complexity through social interaction, thereby offsetting the reduced brain size.

Cognitive Neuroeducation (CNE) is a rigorously researched cutting-edge neuroscience-informed, human-values-oriented modality for the prevention of and recovery from cognitive and behavioral disorder. Through an enriched environment and interaction within a cohesive group dynamic, CNE builds both a neuroprotective shield and core cognitive resources. This booklet introduces CNE, outlining its origins, scientific foundations, program features and person-centered human perspective.

This study identifies the determining factors in the evolution of the uniquely human social brain by which the antecedents of the core behavioral framework of the anatomically modern human were molded. This study examines our core behavior and demonstrates 1) how it defines us as human and 2) how it forms the essential foundation upon which cognitive acuity/fluidity and mental health are maintained. From this revolutionary paradigm shift in the understanding of mental health, and its converse, mental disorder, a breakthrough neuroscience-informed modality of Cognitive Neuroeducation (CNE) has emerged for the prevention of and recovery from cognitive and behavioral disorder.

Exploitation of food resources that are dispersed in time and space has been crucial to the evolutionary success of humans. Recent experimental work has shown that an absence of communication impairs decision-making in a foraging task. Here, we found that individuals in larger teams were more likely to reach group consensus and were more accurate and efficient foragers. Individuals in larger teams were also more likely to gesture to one another, while levels of verbal exchange were not significantly different in small and large groups. At last, teams in which individuals reported that they knew one another and rated team members as helpful and information-seeking were more accurate in their foraging. Overall, our findings offer experimental evidence that larger, communicating, familiar teams are quicker and more accurate foragers. We therefore suggest that complex communication within socially bonded relationships may have been important to the ecological success of the human lineage.

Immaginiamo che il cervello individuale con i suoi cento miliardi di neuroni sia collegato in rete con altri cervelli, ognuno con i suoi cento miliardi di neuroni. Virtualmente potremmo disporre della "potenza di calcolo" di 1022 neuroni, un numero inimmaginabile. Naturalmente non si può fare l'operazione, né con i microcircuiti né con i cervelli. Ci dobbiamo accontentare di una poco fantascientifica rivoluzione che spazzi via l'immondizia capitalistica e renda possibile una polarizzazione dei cervelli, una sintonizzazione sui megahertz dell'onda del cambiamento drastico del hardware e del software di questa società. Una volta si chiamava dittatura del proletariato ed era il risultato transitorio del concretizzarsi del "partito storico" (il movimento reale dal comunismo originario al comunismo sviluppato) in "partito formale".

In detto partito i neuroni-cervello non saranno fantastiliardi ma agiranno in numero sufficiente a traghettare l'umanità fuori del capitalismo. Questa macchina umana sarà certamente coadiuvata dalla macchina-macchina in una simbiosi un po' diversa da quella immaginata oggi dagli scienziati e dai filosofi. Il nato e il prodotto collaboreranno alla definizione dei compiti operando la vera fusione. Sapremo dopo se si tratterà di intelligenza artificiale o naturale. Sapendo però già da subito che di artificiale non c'è niente, tutto è esistente in natura.

Here, we review evidence of unlearned predispositions to orient toward visual and auditory cues asso- ciated with the presence of animate creatures. We concentrate on studies on chicks of galliform species, whose behavioural preferences for social partners are analyzed in a comparative perspective with respect to the human developmental literature. The emerging nature of chicks’ social predispositions is discussed in relation to the underlying physiological mechanisms and to the role of genetic and environmental factors in their development. In the second part of the review, we summarize evidence on the neural substrate of the animacy detectors, again focusing on our animal model of election, the domestic chick. On the basis of a substantial amount of indirect evidence, subpallial structures, among which the optic tectum (homologous to the mammalian superior colliculus), seem to comprise the most probable candi- dates. We also discuss some preliminary evidence of different brain activity, measured by IEG expression, in chicks exposed to predisposed or a non-predisposed stimulus.

The evolutionary trajectory from non-human to human forms of social organization involves change from experiential to relational-based systems of social interaction. Social organization derived from biologically and experientially grounded social interaction reached a hiatus with the great apes due to expansion of the individualization of behavior.  The hiatus ended with the introduction of relational-based social interaction that culminated in social organization based on cultural kinship.  This evolutionary trajectory links biological origins to cultural outcomes and makes evident the centrality of distributed forms of information for both the boundary and internal structure of human societies as these evolved from prior forms of social organization.

This research paper focuses on the effectiveness of the Line Numbered
Concordant Basic Text (LNCBT) of Narcotics Anonymous as an interactive
neurocommunicative and gamificated technique to generate emphatic emotions
through its process and application. The LNCBT is studied as an effective educational,
neurocommunicational and behavioral change technique for recovery from
addictions. Firstly, it was analyzed through Facial Action Coding System (FACS)
using the iMotions Software. Secondly, the FACS results were also contrasted with
text-based content analysis to confirm the relationship between emphatic emotions
and the prose contained in the LNCBT, which the subjects selected through an
interactive communicative and game-based learning process: writing the numbers
of their favorite sentences that they related with and sharing about them.
The analyzed data suggest that LNCBT technique activates emotional empathy,
including the ability of identifying through written text and verbal and nonverbal
expressions. Results confirmed multiple complex emotional flow from recognizing
negative emotions, at the beginning, to more positive emotions, at the end of the technique. From middle time of the technique to the last moments the research
observed more balanced emotional states, once the negative experiences were recognized and shared at the beginning.At the end of the experience joy predominates
(75%–85%of time) while emotions like anger or disgust tend to diminish. Finally,
the text-based content analysis method found data that also suggests that the subjects, during the completion of the LNCBT technique, felt a positive emotional
flow towards empathy, a collective, nonjudgmental and shared balance emotional
state. The results suggest that the interactive neurocommunicative technique of
LNCBT therapeutically supports recovery from the addictive process, from the
isolated self-centered obsessive and compulsive emotional state towards a more
emphatic collective state.

Democracy is the apparent motor of globalization, binding together ideas and institutions such as citizenship, human rights, race, the free market, multiculturalism, development, politics and the economy. This book looks to overturn this dogma and demonstrate that ‘liberal’ democracy in fact encrypts and naturalizes the horrors of capitalism and of coloniality, while denying true or radical democracy, principally through constitutions and constitutional theory.Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo turns to the colonized, the marginalized, the creolized, and creates two novel concepts of politics, the “hidden people” and the “decryption of power” to reach a politics through and of radical democracy. The book shows that democracy is the only space of proper politics and the essential opposition of colonization and power as potestas. Sanín-Restrepo connects post-structuralism, subaltern studies, critical legal studies, de-colonial studies and Caribbean thought to muster the necessary theoretical tools to propose new grounds to decrypt the semblance of democracy that is liberalism and thus to demonstrate that democracy, far from being the standardized rule of the majority, a simple process or an institution, is the true being in the world and of the world.

The structure of communications (already examined by Marx) has by now reached a high level of global integration. Today, thanks to the development of trades and IT network, thanks to the data storage getting into more and more socially-diffused memories (whether in real time or postponed interactive processing), humans are able to communicate in spite of time and space distances. All of this is a result of the rise of a social brain that the future society will be able to use for a new and unimaginable leap. The result will be such important as the one that humans have reached in the passage from gathering to a conscious food and manufactures production.

Here, we review evidence of unlearned predispositions to orient toward visual and auditory cues associated with the presence of animate creatures. We concentrate on studies on chicks of galliform species, whose behavioural preferences for social partners are analyzed in a comparative perspective with respect to the human developmental literature. The emerging nature of chicks' social predispositions is discussed in relation to the underlying physiological mechanisms and to the role of genetic and environmental factors in their development. In the second part of the review, we summarize evidence on the neural substrate of the animacy detectors, again focusing on our animal model of election, the domestic chick. On the basis of a substantial amount of indirect evidence, subpallial structures, among which the optic tectum (homologous to the mammalian superior colliculus), seem to comprise the most probable candidates. We also discuss some preliminary evidence of different brain act...

"Occupy the World Together" is the title of a Facebook page, of the website of a Canadian trade union, of a demonstration of the Occupy Budapest, of many videos on YouTube ... and of 12,000 other results on Google.

“We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.” ( Opening text of the website "We are 99%", dedicated to thousands of short glimpses of life posted by anonymous members of the Occupy Wall Street movement).

“The only solution is World Revolution” (End of statement on the homepage of the Occupy Wall Street website).

“Workers will win if they'll understand that no one is to come. For a marxist the expectation of a Messiah and the cult of the genius, explainable for Peter and Carlyle, are only a miserable covering of helplessness. The Revolution will rise up terrible, but anonymous” (PCInt., 1953)''

Navigational and social challenges due to habitat conditions and sociality are known to influence dentate gyrus (DG) morphology, yet the relative importance of these factors remains unclear. Thus, we studied three natural populations of O. lunatus (Los Molles) and Octodon degus (El Salitre and Rinconada), two caviomorph species that differ in the extent of sociality and with contrasting vegetation cover of habitat used. The brains and DG of male and female breeding degus with simultaneous information on their physical and social environments were examined. The extent of sociality was quantified from total group size and range area overlap. O. degus at El Salitre was more social than at Rinconada and than O. lunatus from Los Molles. The use of transects to quantify cover of vegetation (and other physical objects in the habitat) and measures of the spatial behavior of animals indicated animal navigation based on unique cues or global landmarks is more cognitively challenging to O. lun...

One of most pervasive maxims of American jurisprudence is that law evolves. Applied metaphorically, it expresses the broad idea that law gradually adapts to its environment, unfolding in a linear and progressive trajectory controlled by either human reason or social influence. But science now discredits these assumptions. Law does not just evolve philosophically; it coevolves with everything in nature. Recent breakthroughs in the natural sciences show that humans are born with an instinct for legality. According to the social and systems sciences, this neurobiological faculty extended outward into the social world, initially inspiring a collection of proto-legal mechanisms like prosocial impulses, social norm circles, and peer punishments. Eventually, these social mechanisms culminated in complex legal networks that were prominent, permanent, autonomous, and preeminent. Once entrenched, these “jurisystems” have triggered a number of downward effects, coordinating human conflicts, relieving social stress, and reinforcing social bonds. As law’s influence grows, it continuously shapes social behavior and cultural memory, completing a cycle of epigenetics and gene-culture coevolution that renews our sense of legality. In sum, law coevolves with our genes, brains, societies, and cultures in a loopy, coordinative, information exchange that promotes stability and survival.

Exploitation of food resources that are dispersed in time and space has been crucial to the evolutionary success of humans. Recent experimental work has shown that an absence of communication impairs decision-making in a foraging task. Here, we found that individuals in larger teams were more likely to reach group consensus and were more accurate and efficient foragers. Individuals in larger teams were also more likely to gesture to one another, while levels of verbal exchange were not significantly different in small and large groups. At last, teams in which individuals reported that they knew one another and rated team members as helpful and information-seeking
were more accurate in their foraging. Overall, our findings offer experimental evidence that larger, communicating, familiar teams are quicker and more accurate foragers. We therefore suggest that complex communication within socially bonded relationships may have been important to the ecological success of the human lineage.

Обсуждение статьи "Съэкономить на мозгах" - действительно ли у дятлов «социальные» виды имеют относительно меньший размер мозга, чем «парные», те — меньше, чем одиночные, что резко контрастирует с общей тенденцией, показанной у млекопитающих и птиц. На основе него даётся более перспективное определение социальности - как жизни в условиях постоянной взаимосвязанности и взаимозависимости индивидов, "заинтересованных" в контактах друг с другом, и необязательно в плотных и многочисленных группах (это делают и несоциальные)

We review evolutionary explanations for three major puzzles of the human mind: altruism, religiosity and self-enhancement. Human altruism reaches beyond reciprocity or close-kin care readily explained by game theory and genetic kin selection. Group selection is widely seen as too weak to lead to substantial altruism as it struggles to contain selfishness favored by within-group selection. Yet, reciprocity and punishment leverage the effectiveness of altruism within a group, and genuine altruism is testified to be weak, leaving scope for explanation even by a force as weak as group selection. Moralistic religious culture appears tightly linked to altruism, yet the fitness advantage of a defector within a religious society makes it difficult to conceive religion or related genetic predisposition as an evolutionarily stable strategy. Self-enhancement has direct links to altruism and religiosity, leading to warm-glow altruistic contributions and increased receptiveness to comforting narratives of heavenly justice. Suggested intra-personal and inter-personal benefits of self-enhancement do not detail how the trait should be competitive against more direct behavioral adjustments that yield similar personal benefits but avoid the fitness costs of misperception. We explain religion and bias as imperfect ad-hoc evolutionary adaptations rather than perfect evolutionarily stable strategies. The scant time available for fine-tuning the mind since the emergence of higher cognitive capabilities means near-perfect traits were unlikely to appear, and the extraordinary evolutionary pressure induced by the rapidly evolving environment favored a broad range of genetic novelties despite extra costs.

Analytical thinking predicts irreligiosity across paradigms and contexts. Explanations for this association have included the likelihood that analytical cognition interrupts the expression of innate cognition biases, such as teleology and anthropomorphism, that lead to religious beliefs; or that analytical thinkers are better at discriminating between unrealistic and realistic beliefs. This chapter marshals research from many subfields in cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and sociology to advance an alternative explanation, the "social foundations hypothesis," which posits that analytical cognition is associated with both individualism and with strategic, opportunistic defection on cooperative arrangements. Honestly held religious beliefs serve as indices of heuristic cognition, which in turn telegraphs a strong likelihood that the agent will unreflectively abide by social conventions and norms. The association between holistic thinking and religiosity is thus a product of the need for predictable social coordination and cooperation in high-context social groups.

Presenting evidence from the social brain, we argue that neural
reuse is a dynamic, socially organized process that is influenced
ontogenetically and evolutionarily by the cultural transmission of mental techniques, values, and modes of thought. Anderson’s theory
should be broadened to accommodate cultural effects on the
functioning of architecturally similar neural systems, and the
implications of these differences for reuse.
Reuse of tissues, organs, and systems is a key adaptive strategy in
all phyla across evolution and through development. Neural
systems are reused in the evolution and development of
complex human behaviors, including social emotion and the representation
of social status. Research shows: (1) evolutionary and
developmental reciprocal reuse between social and nonsocial
neural systems; (2) the importance of cultural transmission as a
mode for learning evolutionarily and ontogenetically new uses
and combinations of neural systems; and (3) the possibility that
socially mediated reuse may affect the original, primitive function
of a neural system, either developmentally or evolutionarily. In
short, although Anderson’s approach maps distinct cognitive
functions to unique networks, neural reuse within and between
networks is a dynamic process involving culture and sociality.

In this work, the general organization of the olfactory pathways from antennal lobes (AL) and its topographic representation in the mushroom bodies (MBs) of hymenopteran social insects are described and discussed to elucidate the organization of the olfactory pathway and the meaning of its specialized structure in social insects.