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Learning and the Origins of Consciousness: An Evolutionary Approach
Over the last fifteen years, Simona Ginsburg and I developed an evolutionary approach for studying basic consciousness, suggesting that the evolution of learning drove the evolutionary transition to from non-conscious to conscious animals. I present the rationale underlying this thesis, which has led to the identification of a capacity that we call the evolutionary transition marker, which, when we find evidence of it, we have evidence that the major evolutionary transition in which we are interested has gone to completion. I then put forward our proposal that the evolutionary marker of basic consciousness is a complex form of associative learning that we call unlimited associative learning (UAL), and that the evolution of this capacity drove the transition to consciousness. I discuss the implications of this thesis for questions pertaining to the neural dynamics that constitute conscious, to its taxonomic distribution and to the ecological context in which it first emerged. I end by pointing to some of the ways in which the relationship between UAL and consciousness can be experimentally tested in humans and in non-human animals.
The neuroecological context of group living
Dr. Sean O'Donnell is a Professor of Biodiversity Earth & Environmental Science at Drexel University, USA. His neuroscience research focuses on how brain structure plasticity & evolution are affected by social behavior, mainly using insects as models. He is also interested in tropical ecology & thermal physiology. He conducts field research & teaches field courses in Central & South America, as well as in the Negev Desert in Israel.
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