Crows are among the satellite ’s most intelligent animal , teaching their untested to use toolsfor scrounge andbanding togetherto struggle off intruder . Now , the first bailiwick of how nonobjective reasoning work in these birds ’ Einstein could shed light on how intelligence works in a truly alien , non - mammal brain .
https://gizmodo.com/the-mysterious-tool-making-culture-shared-by-crows-and-1460350033
https://gizmodo.com/corvids-the-birds-who-think-like-humans-5969515
Illustration byTiger - tyger
We ’ve studied brain structure pretty extensively in mammals from homo and apes to whale and black eye . But German neuroscientist Lena Veit and Andreas Nieder are the first to look out what happen in crow brain as these hiss work their style through a serial publication of mental capacity - teasers . They in reality wired the crows ’ brain up with electrode , look on as individual nerve cell fire when the crows did a test that need abstract reasoning . What Veit and Nieder ground bring out a draw about what tidings looks like in a nous that ’s nothing like our own .
The crow , and some of its relatives in the corvid phratry ( such as jays and pack rat ) , are among the only intelligent mintage we ’ve encountered outside the world of mammals . But their brains are utterly different from ours . The mammalian seat of understanding is in our prefrontal pallium , a thin level of nervus - riddled tissue on the exterior of the front region of our brainpower . Birds have no prefrontal cortex ( PFC ) . Instead , they have the nidopallium caudolaterale ( NCL ) , which is located toward the middle of their mental capacity . you could see the different region in the image , below .
The matter that ’s really interesting about comparing bird and human intelligence is that we did not germinate from a vulgar , healthy ancestor . Our last common ancestor with hoot lived during the Permian period , about 300 million years ago , before the age of dinosaur . It probably looked like a hybrid between a reptile and a rodent , and was about the size of a big raccoon .
This ancestor ’s simple brain was prevail by inherent aptitude rather than mellow - stratum knowledge . Still , lurking inside its rather humble skull was a brain part called the pallium , which over millions of age evolved into the PFC in mammals and the NCL in raspberry . That makes mammal and raspberry intelligence an splendid exercise ofparallel evolution — both group of animals developed intelligence severally of one another .
Despite all their difference , the PFC and NCL have a few features in common . Veit and Niederwrite in Nature Communicationsthat both regions are involved in “ workings memory , reversal learning and reward prediction . ” The areas also “ deal authoritative dimension such as heavy innervation by dopaminergic fibres and connectivity patterns with multiple sensory input , limbic and motor output part . ” What that intend is that the NCL and PFC are both packed with nerve cell , or boldness cells , that respond to the important neurotransmitter Dopastat . Its neurons are also touch base to the share of the brain that handle memory , emotion , and body movement . The PFC and NCL are brain program line centers , synthesise information from a vast raiment of inputs and outputs .
give that the NCL is the seat of crow intelligence agency , the researcher settle to see whether they could actually watch in existent time as a crow figured out a puzzle . They used crows that had been raised in imprisonment , and trained to do a test kind of like the Sesame Street “ which one does n’t belong ? ” quiz . The crows had to describe whether two figure were dissimilar or the same .
First , the researchers put electrodes over the crows ’ NCL , to watch each nerve cell firing . Then they would present the crow with an image . Next , the line-shooting would be prompted to prefer an image that match or did n’t cope with that image ( they had already been trained to do this with a sound or sign that either mean “ match ” or “ do n’t equal ” ) . lastly , the vaporing would be present with two images and have to opt the matching or not matching one .
This is a test that requires abstract reasoning , because the images change all the time and the crows have to apply the nonobjective musical theme of “ friction match ” or “ not match ” to a variety of inputs . In addition , this psychometric test disclose that the researchers defined intelligence activity as an ability to do abstract reasoning . Obviously there are many ways to delineate intelligence , and this is simply one way to do it .
What the researchers retrieve was pretty awful . They identify what they call “ abstract normal neurons ” which governed which answer the crows would give . Basically , the doll ’ brains assigned one rule ( match ) to one nerve cell , then the other rule ( do n’t equalize ) to another nerve cell . When the crows correctly matched an look-alike , the peer rule neuron would discharge . When the crow feed an wrong resolution , or became mix up , the abstract rule neuron fire only very weakly .
Veit and Nieder conclude that this was substantial grounds that crows ’ brain have developed to handle abstract rule , which is why the birdie are good at larn and responding to a variety of situations in a compromising way . They note that “ the power to channelize conduct by general rules rather than by rely on touch on stimulus - answer connexion constitutes a survival reward . ” This is the same survival advantage confab on humans due to our news . But our intelligence fill a very unlike body structure in our brains .
What this experimentation suggests is that two dramatically dissimilar coinage might have similar abstract logical thinking ability — even if their brains are completely unlike each other . If we ideate that intelligence can only inhabit in a mammal - like genius , we may drop out on discovering impudent life story course elsewhere . The crow brain may be the first truly alien intelligence we ’ve been able to learn .
The Corvus brain may also help us better understand what ’s required to work up an artificial intelligence , too . We can look at what the crow and human brain part in coarse , and reflect about what it might take to create an intelligence that occupy in a non - brain structure . As I mentioned sooner , both the PFC and NCL contain many nerve cell connect to other voice of the brain , and they work a lot with the neurotransmitter dopamine . These regions also appear to deal in nonfigurative rules .
Most of all , we can find Leslie Townes Hope in the mind that intelligence is n’t just a quirk of one type of brain . Many kinds of brains can become intelligent . We are not alone .
take the scientific paperin Nature Communications
Annalee Newitz is the editor - in - tribal chief of io9 . She is also the generator ofScatter , conform and Remember : How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction .
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