The evolutionary origins of the Global Neuronal Workspace in vertebrates.

The Global Neuronal Workspace theory of consciousness offers an explicit functional architecture that relates consciousness to cognitive abilities such as perception, attention, memory, and evaluation. We show that the functional architecture of the Global Neuronal Workspace, which is based mainly on human studies, corresponds to the cognitive-affective architecture proposed by the Unlimited Associative Learning theory that describes minimal consciousness. However, we suggest that when applied to basal vertebrates, both models require important modifications to accommodate what has been learned about the evolution of the vertebrate brain. Most importantly, comparative studies suggest that in basal vertebrates, the Global Neuronal Workspace is instantiated by the event memory system found in the hippocampal homolog. This proposal has testable predictions and implications for understanding hippocampal and cortical functions, the evolutionary relations between memory and consciousness, and the evolution of unified perception.

"Microbiota, symbiosis and individuality summer school" meeting report.

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, symbiosis and individuality: conceptual and philosophical issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. Video Abstract.

Analogies can speed up the motor learning process.

Analogies have been shown to improve motor learning in various tasks and settings. In this study we tested whether applying analogies can shorten the motor learning process and induce insight and skill improvement in tasks that usually demand many hours of practice. Kinematic measures were used to quantify participant's skill and learning dynamics. For this purpose, we used a drawing task, in which subjects drew lines to connect dots, and a mirror game, in which subjects tracked a moving stimulus. After establishing a baseline, subjects were given an analogy, explicit instructions or no further instruction. We compared their improvement in skill (quantified by coarticulation or smoothness), accuracy and movement duration. Subjects in the analogy and explicit groups improved their coarticulation in the target task, while significant differences were found in the mirror game only at a slow movement frequency between analogy and controls.We conclude that a verbal analogy can be a useful tool for rapidly changing motor kinematics and movement strategy in some circumstances, although in the tasks selected it did not produce better performance in most measurements than explicit guidance. Furthermore, we observed that different movement facets may improve independently from others, and may be selectively affected by verbal instructions. These results suggest an important role for the type of instruction in motor learning.