BIO 115

• thalamus (at the transition between brainstem and higher regions) to the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in the posterior cortex (at the anterior end of parietal lobes)
• topografisch gegliedert = je mehr Hirnareale einem Körperteil zugeschrieben, desto höhere somatosensorische relevanz (about one-third of all somatosensation refers to face alone (mainly lips))

On the individual as carrier and reproductive unit of a group of linked genes

• primary motor cortex (PMC) in the frontal lobe

• topografisch gegliedert

• Cortical regions that are neither primary sensory (input) nor primary motor (output) are named association areas, they are the processing or ‘thinking’ bits of the brain
• They include secondary sensory and motor areas and ‘high cognition’ areas
• examples: olfaktorisch, gustatorisch, visual, somatosensory, motor, auditory
• Humans: most of the brain is dedicated to association processes (input/output)

Prisoner's dilemma from Game Theory

- Iteration: allow learning and reciprocal interactions

- Tit-for-Tat: react to opponent's last move

- Win-stay-lose-shift: react to opponent and own last move

- Indirect reciprocity: when being observed people care about their image

- Generalized reciprocity: decision is based on previous positive interaction

- Costly punishment: enforcing of cooperation e.g. police

Information coming from different sources who disagree

- McGurk Effect suggests that our mind is highly visual - Clash between visual and auditory information, we ‘see’ the sound rather than ‘listen’ to the sound (ba ba oder da da)

• the set of mental processes holding limited information in a temporarily accessible state, it is the ‘here and now’, the ‘present’ (digit memory etc.)

• analogous to RAM memory (long-term memory is analogous to hard disk memory)

- Generalized reciprocity in rats

- Punishment in ants

- Policing in honey bees

- Conditional cooperation in paper wasps

Creating/assessing lasting memories is one of the roles of the hippocampus (not the cortex)

overexploitation of the common resource yields a short-time benefit compared to long-term collapse of the system -> could be us with how the world is looking climate change etc.

- Viruses

- Bacteria

- Protists (eukaryotic single-celled organisms)

- Macroparasites

- Working memory and awareness remain intact but no new episodic memories are formed (kein Langzeitgedächtnis mehr)

- His reality is a constantly moving window of 10-30 seconds of awareness

Obligate: relieson host for replication and transmission (survival in the environment possible)

Opportunistic: replicate in environmental habitats, but can infect hosts

- memory is ‘imagined’ or recreated every time it is recalled

- Environmentally acquried (food, water, other objects)

- Vector transmitted (mosquitoes, ticks, flies)

- Horizontal transmission (blood, STDs, aerosols)

- Vertical transmission (mother-to-offspring)

- Nosocomial transmission (hospital acquired)

Study of the causes and origins of diseases

• concept representing the highest-level association area in the brain
• Most functions associated with CE are located in the prefrontal cortex

Study of the distribution and determinants of health-related events within populations

• Damage to prefrontal areas cause deficits in cognitive control
• patients exhibit inappropriate behaviour (‘antisocial’, ‘selfish’, ‘immature’)

local outbreak

more widespread, larger outbreaks

affects a large fraction of the worldwide population

• known as the "self area", damage can cause personality change or disorders as loss of ego
• one specific region is: theory of mind (medial präfrontal kortex) - thinking about myself or others

Not all diseases are everywhere

There are more diseases in the tropics than in the temperate zone

Diseases have limited distribution ranges, only few are worldwide

- true: For example, ‘ToM’ is everywhere in the brain, ToM areas’ perform other, more general functions too

- Infectious agents specific to humans are highly globalized

- Zoonotic dieseases have to lowest level of globalization

- Multi-host infectious agents have intermediate level of globalization

- > the shallower the slope the more globalized

Migration patterns correlated with presence of fewer but more widespread pathogens

• what made human brain so large and human cognition so special is its intimate relationship with a special type of information: cultural information (evidence: early dependence of hominins on cultural information)

• No longer: learning

- domestication -> close interaction between humans and animals -> increased probability for diseases to hop from animals to humans (humans share many diseases with domesticated animals)

- agriculture -> higher population densities -> larger groups -> closer interactoins -> increased transmission opportunities -> crowd epidemic diseases

• dependence on cultural artefacts were part of the hominin lifestyle before our brains were large

• large brain, language, etc. started to evolve

acquisition of cultural information (missing topic in neuroscience)

hunter-gatherer: exposure to local pathogens -> diverse set of pathogens -> wild animal reservoirs -> many potential vectors present

temperate zone agricultural societies: exposure to domesticated animals -> fewer pathogens -> higher population density -> croweded epidemic disease -> fewer vectors -> more global spread of pathogens

large amount of diseases from the old world

Temperate: acute; crowded epidemic disease; dies or recovers within weeks; long-lasting immunity; large proportion from domesticated animals

Tropical: transmitted by insect vectors: animal reservoirs more frequent; few are acute, lasting for months even years