Browsing by Author "Guzeldere, Guven"

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    Culture From Infrahumans to Humans: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology
    (2007-05-07T19:07:23Z) Ramsey, Grant Aaron
    It has become increasingly common to explain the behavior of animals—from sperm whales to songbirds—in terms of culture. But what is animal culture, what is its relationship to other biological concepts and to human culture, and what impact does culture have on a species’ evolution and ecology? My dissertation is an attempt to answer these questions. After an introductory chapter, the dissertation begins (Chapter 2) with a proposal for a novel concept of culture and a critique of the existing ways in which culture has been characterized. These characterizations include views from cultural anthropology as well as attempts to apply the concept of culture to animals. The existing concepts are problematic in a number of ways, such as a priori excluding infrahumans from being candidates for possessing culture, or mistaking what culture is for its measure. In this chapter I offer a way to understand culture that avoids these and other problems. With a concept of culture in hand, the next chapter of my dissertation (Chapter 3) examines and criticizes one key way of understanding the concept of culture, meme theory. In Chapter 4 I turn to the question of how cultural systems can arise in nature, how they can be adaptive, and how the evolution and ecology of species is impacted by the possession of a cultural system. In order to answer these questions I introduce a general constraint on cultural systems—what I am calling the Fundamental Constraint—that has to be satisfied in order for cultural systems to be adaptive. In the final chapter I develop a concept of innovation and draw out the conceptual and empirical implications of this concept.
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    Functional Neuroimaging Investigations of Human Memory: Comparisons of Successful Encoding and Retrieval for Relational and Item Information
    (2007-05-10T14:55:10Z) Prince, Steven Eric
    Memory is a complex and multifaceted entity. Cognitive psychology has adopted terminology to help simplify the study of memory. For example, one can consider the cognitive process the brain is engaged in, such as encoding versus retrieval. Similarly, one can consider the content of information, such as words, faces, or scenes. Content and process can also interact such as with instructions to view a face that happens to be situated next to a house (item memory) versus instructions to evaluate whether the face 'belongs' in the house (relational memory). Although neuropsychology, animal lesion studies, and cognitive neuroscience have identified brain structures that are consistently associated with memory performance, such as the medial temporal lobes (MTL) and prefrontal cortex (PFC), the specifics of when and why such regions participate in memory is still largely unexplored. Theoretical standpoints are often at odds about whether regions such as the MTL operate as a functional unit, supporting memory in general, or whether subregions within the MTL support specific types of memory (e.g. item versus relational memory). To investigate how memory processes might recruit unique and common brain regions, three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were conducted. Each study involved comparisons of successful encoding (trials later remembered versus forgotten) and successful retrieval (hits versus misses). Experiment 1, using semantic and perceptual word pairs, found unique contributions for subregions in the MTL and PFC, dependent on memory phase and stimulus class. One region in the left hippocampus was associated with memory success, regardless of either memory phase or stimulus class. Experiment 2, using faces and scenes, found unique contributions for 'stimulus sensitive' subregions of the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus, as well as for the PFC, and MTL that were dependent on content-process interactions, or independent of content and process. Experiment 3, using faces, scenes, and face-scene pairings, found unique contributions for subregions of the MTL and PFC based on item versus relational processing and memory phase. Together, the results of the three experiments provide support for dichotomies in brain structures based on specific processes, specific content, or process-content interactions.