In this lecture, I would like to share with the broad audience the empirical results gathered and the theoretical advancements made in the framework of the Lendület project entitled ’The cognitive basis of human sociality’. The main objective of this project was to understand the mechanisms that enable the unique sociality of humans, from the angle of cognitive science. In my talk,  I will focus on recent empirical evidence in the study of three fundamental social cognitive functions (social categorization, theory of mind and social learning; mainly from the empirical lenses of developmental psychology) in order to outline a theory that emphasizes the need to consider their interconnectedness. The proposal is that the ability to represent the social world along categories and the capacity to read others’ minds are used in an integrated way to efficiently assess the epistemic states of fellow humans by creating a shared representational space. The emergence of this shared representational space is both the result of and a prerequisite to efficient learning about the physical and social environment.

Tom Froese is Assistant Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), where he heads the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit. He is a cognitive scientist with a background in phenomenological philosophy, human-computer interaction, and complex systems theory. His interdisciplinary research centers on the role of agent-environment interaction in shaping cognition and consciousness, specifically when the interaction process involves sociality and technology. In this talk he will present current work in progress on “irruption theory”, a new theory of consciousness that integrates an embodied-enactive account of basic mind with radical formulations of the freedom and efficacy of intentional agency.

If only those behaviours evolve that increase the actor’s own survival and reproductive success, then it might come as a surprise that cooperative behaviours, i.e. providing benefits to others, are a widespread phenomenon. Many animals cooperate even with unrelated individuals in various contexts, like providing care or food. One possibility to explain these behaviours is reciprocity. Reciprocal cooperation, i.e. helping those that were helpful before, is a ubiquitous and important trait of human sociality. Still, the evolutionary origin of it is largely unclear, mainly because it is believed that other animals do not exchange help reciprocally. Consequently, reciprocity is suggested to have evolved in the human lineage only. In contrast to this, I propose that reciprocity is not necessarily cognitively demanding and likely to be widespread. In my talk, I will first shed light on the mechanisms of reciprocal cooperation in Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus). In a series of studies, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that Norway rats reciprocally exchange goods and services between and within different commodities and independent of kinship. Furthermore, to understand the evolutionary origins of human reciprocity, and whether it is shared with other animals, I will then discuss evidence for reciprocity in non-human primates, which are our closest living relatives. A thorough analysis of the findings showed that reciprocity is present and, for example, not confined to unrelated individuals, but that the choice of commodities can impact the likelihood of reciprocation. Based on my findings, I conclude that reciprocal cooperation in non-human animals is present but largely neglected and not restricted to humans. In order to deepen our understanding of the evolutionary origins of reciprocity in more general, future studies should investigate when and how reciprocity in non-human animals emerged and how it is maintained.

Our work concerns the general problem of adaptive behaviour in response to predatory threats, and of the neural mechanisms underlying a choice between strategies. When faced with a threat, an animal must decide whether to freeze, reducing its chances of being noticed, or to flee to the safety of a refuge. Animals from fish to primates choose between these two alternatives when confronted by an attacking predator, a choice that largely depends on the context in which the threat occurs. Recent work has made strides identifying the pre-motor circuits, and their inputs, which control freezing behaviour in rodents, but how contextual information is integrated to guide this choice is still far from understood. The social environment is a potent contextual modulator of defensive behaviours of animals in a group. Indeed, anti-predation strategies are believed to be a major driving force for the evolution of sociality. We recently found that fruit flies in response to visual looming stimuli, simulating a large object on collision course, make rapid freeze/flee choices accompanied by lasting changes in the fly’s internal state, reflected in altered cardiac activity. In this talk, I will discuss our work on how flies process contextual cues, focusing on the social environment, to guide their behavioural response to a threat. We have identified a social safety cue, resumption of activity, and visual projection neurons involved in processing this cue. Given the knowledge regarding sensory detection of looming threats and descending neuron involved in the expression of freezing, we are now in a unique position to understand how information about a threat is integrated with cues from the social environment to guide the choice of whether to freeze.