Higher Cognition Research Articles

Brain-computer Interaction in the Smart Era.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) system serves as a critical link between external output devices and the human brain. A monitored object's mental state, sensory cognition, and even higher cognition are reflected in its electroencephalography (EEG) signal. Nevertheless, unprocessed EEG signals are frequently contaminated with a variety of artifacts, rendering the analysis and elimination of impurities from the collected EEG data exceedingly challenging, not to mention the manual adjustment thereof. Over the last few decades, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has contributed to the development of BCI technology. Algorithms derived from AI and machine learning have significantly enhanced the ability to analyze and process EEG electrical signals, thereby expanding the range of potential interactions between the human brain and computers. As a result, the present BCI technology with the help of AI can assist physicians in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of their patients' physical and psychological status, thereby contributing to improvements in their health and quality of life.

The future of the labor force: higher cognition and more skills

Skills can be categorized into two types: social-cognitive and sensory-physical. Sensory-physical skills, governed by explicit rules and transparent rationales, can be effectively executed through meticulous programming, with humans spontaneously trusting machines to perform these skills. In contrast, social-cognitive skills entail open interpretations reliant on personal opinions or intuition and are contextually and problem-dependent. The inherent complexity and subjectivity of social-cognitive skills, underscored by Polanyi’s paradox and algorithm aversion, render machines less capable of replicating these skills. Thus, automation exerts differential impacts on these two skill sets. Moreover, the specialization of machines leads to expensive setup costs when switching tasks, whereas humans switch tasks with much less effort. The versatility in skills enables workers to adapt to a wide array of tasks, making them less prone to automation. Our empirical research, utilizing skill score data from O*NET and employment data from Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), validated the attributes of labor resistant to automation: the higher the scores of cognitive skills in a job, the lower its susceptibility to automation; workers endowed with a diverse array of skills experience an increase in their employment share. Conversely, jobs focusing on sensory-physical skills are more likely to be supplanted by machines. Therefore, workers can adopt two strategies to maintain a competitive edge. First, they can enhance cognitive skills, such as creativity and critical thinking. Second, they can develop diverse skills, encompassing both social-cognitive and sensory-physical skills. Specializing in a specific sensory-physical skill does not offer an advantage. Fostering a workforce proficient in cognitive skills and equipped with multifaceted skills, that is, flexible workers, becomes imperative. Our investigation represents the inaugural effort to empirically affirm the differential impact of automation on sensory-physical versus social-cognitive skills, thereby delineating the characteristics of irreplaceable labor. This analysis offers critical insights for individual career development and the strategic planning of national educational systems.

The role of developmental caregiving programming in modulating our affiliation tendency and the vulnerability to social anxiety and eating disorders.

Attachment is the evolutionarily-established process through which humans create bonds with others to receive care from them. The phenomenon is as essential to our physical survival as it is to our psychological development. An increasing number of studies demonstrates that in sensitive periods during the early years of life, our brain circuitry is programmed in the interactions with our caregivers, with the imprinting of information over multiple attachment dimensions. Adopting a basic brain-computer analogy, we can think of this knowledge as the psycho-social firmware of our mind. According to a recently proposed extension of the classical three-dimensional view, one attachment dimension - somaticity - concerns the caregiver's task of reflecting and confirming the child's (internal) states - such as sensations, emotions, and representations - to support the child's ability to identify and define those entities autonomously. Relying on multidisciplinary evidence - from neuroscientific, developmental, evolutionary, and clinical sources - we suggest that somaticity (H1) has the adaptive function to modulate our tendency to comply and affiliate with a reference group but also (H2) increases the vulnerability to developing Social Anxiety (SA) and Eating Disorders (EDs). We evaluate H1-H2, (1) indicating the evolutionary role of somaticity in modulating our affiliation tendency to optimize the ancestral threat-opportunity balance coming from infectious diseases and (2) showing the deep connection between SA-EDs and the features most closely related to somaticity - interoception and parenting style. Finally, we discuss three relevant implications of H1-H2: (A) Bringing into research focus the adaptive role of our firmware knowledge system versus the hardware (neural substrate) and software (higher cognition) ones. (B) Complementing the well-grounded Objectification and Allocentric Lock Theories, allowing us to integrate multiple levels of explanation on the etiology of psychopathology. (C) Suggesting the design of new psychological treatments. While not aiming to prove H1-H2, our analysis supports them and encourages their direct testing.

An Integrated Hand-Object Dense Pose Estimation Approach With Explicit Occlusion Awareness for Human-Robot Collaborative Disassembly

Human-robot collaborative disassembly (HRCD) has gained much interest in the disassembly tasks of end-of-life products, integrating both robot’s high efficiency in repetitive works and human’s flexibility with higher cognition. Explicit human-object perceptions are significant but remain little reported in the literature for adaptive robot decision-makings, especially in the close proximity co-work with partial occlusions. Aiming to bridge this gap, this study proposes a vision-based 3D dense hand-object pose estimation approach for HRCD. First, a mask-guided attentive module is proposed to better attend to hand and object areas, respectively. Meanwhile, explicit consideration of the occluded area in the input image is introduced to mitigate the performance degradation caused by visual occlusion, which is inevitable during HRCD hand-object interactions. In addition, a 3D hand-object pose dataset is collected for a lithium-ion battery disassembly scenario in the lab environment with comparative experiments carried out, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —This work aims to overcome the challenge of joint hand-object pose estimation in a human-robot collaborative disassembly scenario, of which can also be applied to many other close-range human-robot/machine collaboration cases with practical values. The ability to accurately perceive the pose of the human hand and workpiece under partial occlusion is crucial for the collaborative robot to successfully carry out co-manipulation with human operators. This paper proposes an approach that can jointly estimate the 3D pose of the hand and object in an integrated model. An explicit prediction of the occlusion area is then introduced as a regularization term during model training. This can make the model more robust to partial occlusion between the hand and object. The comparative experiments suggest that the proposed approach outperforms many existing hand-object estimation ones. Nevertheless, the dependency on manually labeled training data can limit its application. In the future, we will consider semi-supervised or unsupervised training to address this issue and achieve faster adaptation to different industrial scenarios.

THE ASSOCIATIONS OF SOCIOECONOMIC POSITION WITH STRUCTURAL BRAIN DAMAGE AND CONNECTIVITY AND COGNITION

Abstract Socioeconomic inequalities in the risk for cognitive impairment have been reported, which might partly act through structural brain damage and connectivity. This study investigated the extent to which the association of early-life socioeconomic position (SEP) with later-life cognitive performance is mediated by later-life SEP, and whether the association of SEP with later-life cognitive performance can be explained by structural brain damage and connectivity. We used cross-sectional data from the population-based Maastricht study (n=4,839; mean age 59.2±8.7 years, 49.8% women). Early-life SEP was assessed retrospectively by self-reported poverty and parental education. Later-life SEP included education, occupation, and household income. Participants underwent cognitive testing and 3 T magnetic resonance imaging to measure volumes of white matter hyperintensities, gray matter, white matter, cerebrospinal fluid, and structural connectivity. Multiple linear regression analyses tested the associations between SEP, MRI brain markers and cognition. Structural equation modeling tested mediation. Results indicated that higher SEP was associated with higher grey matter volume, lower white matter volume, and higher structural connectivity. Structural brain damage and lower structural connectivity were associated with lower cognition. Both higher early-life and later-life SEP were associated with higher cognition. The association of early-life SEP with later-life cognition was partly mediated by later-life SES (73.8%). However, the extent to which the association of SEP with cognition could be explained by structural brain damage or connectivity was marginal (up to 5.9%). More research is needed to investigate alternative pathways that can explain the associations between SEP with later-life cognition.

Transcription factors in microcephaly.

Higher cognition in humans, compared to other primates, is often attributed to an increased brain size, especially forebrain cortical surface area. Brain size is determined through highly orchestrated developmental processes, including neural stem cell proliferation, differentiation, migration, lamination, arborization, and apoptosis. Disruption in these processes often results in either a small (microcephaly) or large (megalencephaly) brain. One of the key mechanisms controlling these developmental processes is the spatial and temporal transcriptional regulation of critical genes. In humans, microcephaly is defined as a condition with a significantly smaller head circumference compared to the average head size of a given age and sex group. A growing number of genes are identified as associated with microcephaly, and among them are those involved in transcriptional regulation. In this review, a subset of genes encoding transcription factors (e.g., homeobox-, basic helix-loop-helix-, forkhead box-, high mobility group box-, and zinc finger domain-containing transcription factors), whose functions are important for cortical development and implicated in microcephaly, are discussed.

Distinct Contributions of the Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia to Arithmetic Procedures.

Humans exhibit complex mathematical skills attributed to the exceptional enlargement of neocortical regions throughout evolution. In the current work, we initiated a novel exploration of the ancient subcortical neural network essential for mathematical cognition. Using a neuropsychological approach, we report that degeneration of two subcortical structures, the cerebellum and basal ganglia, impairs performance in symbolic arithmetic. We identify distinct computational impairments in male and female participants with cerebellar degeneration (CD) or Parkinson's disease (PD). The CD group exhibited a disproportionate cost when the arithmetic sum increased, suggesting that the cerebellum is critical for iterative procedures required for calculations. The PD group showed a disproportionate cost for equations with increasing addends, suggesting that the basal ganglia are critical for chaining multiple operations. In Experiment 2, the two patient groups exhibited intact practice gains for repeated equations at odds with an alternative hypothesis that these impairments were related to memory retrieval. Notably, we discuss how the counting and chaining operations relate to cerebellar and basal ganglia function in other task domains (e.g., motor processes). Overall, we provide a novel perspective on how the cerebellum and basal ganglia contribute to symbolic arithmetic. Our studies demonstrate the constraints on the computational role of two subcortical regions in higher cognition.

Neurological soft signs and cognition among inpatients with schizophrenia

ABSTRACT Introduction: Evidence has shown that neurological soft signs are strongly associated with neurocognitive dysfunction. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to assess the association between NSS and cognitive impairments in a sample of inpatients with schizophrenia. The secondary objective was to explore the association between NSS total scores and functioning. Methods: The study enrolled 95 inpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia disorders and 45 healthy controls. The neurological evaluation scale (NES) was used to assess neurological soft sign while the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) was used to evaluate cognitive functioning in patients with schizophrenia. Results: Patients with schizophrenia had significantly higher mean scores on the NES total test and subtests than the control group. Higher cognition was significantly associated with lower NES total and subtest scores. Higher functional independence was significantly associated with a lower NES total score (Beta = −.25), lower motor coordination subtest score (Beta = −.04), and lower others subtest (Beta = −.12). When taking the functional independence scale as the dependent variable, a higher NES total score was significantly associated with lower functioning (Beta = −0.03). Conclusion: NSS were associated to neurocognitive impairments in almost every domain among patients with schizophrenia. Further prospective research is still needed to confirm this role.

Timing and level of educational attainment and late-life cognition in the KHANDLE study.

The timing of educational attainment may modify its effects on late-life cognition, yet most studies evaluate education only at a single time point. Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE) Study cohort participants (N=554) reported educational attainment (dichotomized at any college education) at two time points, and we classified them as having low, high, or later-life high educational attainment. Linear mixed-effects models estimated associations between educational attainment change groups and domain-specific cognitive outcomes (z-standardized). Compared to low educational attainment, high (β=0.59 SD units; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.39, 0.79) and later-life high educational attainment (β =0.22; 95% CI: 0.00, 0.44) were associated with higher executive function. Only high educational attainment was associated with higher verbal episodic memory (β = 0.27; 95% CI: 0.06, 0.48). Level and timing of educational attainment are both associated with domain-specific cognition. A single assessment for educational attainment may inadequately characterize protective associations with late-life cognition. Few studies have examined both level and timing of educational attainment on cognition. Marginalized populations are more likely to attain higher education in adulthood. Higher educational attainment in late life is also associated with higher cognition.

Early mobilization in a pediatric intensive care unit and WeeFIM scores at rehabilitation: A retrospective study.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between early mobility (EM) of pediatric patients mechanically ventilated and functional outcomes in rehabilitation using WeeFIM scores, as well as hospital length of stay (LOS), ICU LOS, and rehabilitation LOS. A retrospective chart review of 189 patients was completed to compare those who received EM interventions to those who did not in the ICU. Data extracted from the years 2015-2019 included: all patients who were between zero and 21 years, were mechanically ventilated via endotracheal tube (ETT) for > 48 hours, and then transferred to the comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation unit (IRU). For respiratory patients, the EM group had higher WeeFIM scores in all categories at admission to IRU compared to the comparison group. Neurosurgery patients had higher cognition and total WeeFIM scores in the EM group at admission to IRU. All diagnoses demonstrated shorter hospital, ICU, and IRU LOS for the comparison group versus the EM group. EM of mechanically ventilated pediatric patients with a primary respiratory diagnosis demonstrated improved function at admission to IRU compared to those who did not participate in EM. Prospective research needs to be done to examine this relationship further.

The spectral profile of cortical activation during a visuospatial mental rotation task and its correlation with working memory.

The search for a cortical signature of intelligent behavior has been a longtime motivation in Neuroscience. One noticeable characteristic of intelligence is its association with visuospatial skills. This has led to a steady focus on the functional and structural characteristics of the frontoparietal network (FPN) of areas involved with higher cognition and spatial behavior in humans, including the question of whether intelligence is correlated with larger or smaller activity in this important cortical circuit. This question has broad significance, including speculations about the evolution of human cognition. One way to indirectly measure cortical activity with millisecond precision is to evaluate the event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) of alpha power (alpha ERSP) during cognitive tasks. Mental rotation, or the ability to transform a mental representation of an object to accurately predict how the object would look from a different angle, is an important feature of everyday activities and has been shown in previous work by our group to be positively correlated with intelligence. In the present work, we evaluate whether alpha ERSP recorded over the parietal, frontal, temporal, and occipital regions of adolescents performing easy and difficult trials of the Shepard-Metzler's mental rotation task, correlates or are predicted by intelligence measures of the Weschler's intelligence scale. We used a database obtained from a previous study of intellectually gifted (N = 15) and average intelligence (N = 15) adolescents. Our findings suggest that in challenging task conditions, there is a notable difference in the prominence of alpha event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) activity between various cortical regions. Specifically, we found that alpha ERSP in the parietal region was less prominent relative to those in the frontal, temporal and occipital regions. Working memory scores predict alpha ERSP values in the frontal and parietal regions. In the frontal cortex, alpha ERSP of difficult trials was negatively correlated with working memory scores. Thus, our results suggest that even though the FPN is task-relevant during mental rotation tasks, only the frontal alpha ERSP is correlated with working memory score in mental rotation tasks.

Timing of physical activity across adulthood on later-life cognition: 30 years follow-up in the 1946 British birth cohort

BackgroundTo assess how timing, frequency and maintenance of being physically active, spanning over 30 years in adulthood, is associated with later-life cognitive function.MethodsParticipants (n=1417, 53% female) were from the prospective...

RELIGION AND TRAJECTORIES OF COGNITIVE FUNCTION AMONG WHITE, BLACK, AND HISPANIC OLDER ADULTS

Abstract Most prior research on the relationship between religious involvement and cognition among older adults is based on cross-sectional data and yields inconsistent results. We use longitudinal data from 14,161 older adults in the Health and Retirement study (HRS) to investigate whether religious involvement, measured by attendance, integration, and religiosity (i.e., beliefs, meanings, and values) is associated with trajectories of cognitive function from 2006 to 2016 among a diverse sample of respondents. We find that religiosity is associated with lower levels of cognition at baseline among White adults (b=-0.12, p &amp;lt; 0.001), but higher levels of cognition among Black adults (b=0.18, p &amp;lt; 0.05). In addition, growth curve analysis reveals that religious attendance is associated with higher cognition over time for Hispanic respondents (b=0.07, p &amp;lt; 0.001). Religious involvement is associated with later-life cognition, but this relationship differs for White, Black, and Hispanic older adults.

Vascular Brain Lesions, Cognitive Reserve, and Their Association with Cognitive Profile in Persons with Early-Stage Cognitive Decline.

Cognitive reserve may protect against the effects of brain pathology, but few studies have looked at whether cognitive reserve modifies the adverse effects of vascular brain pathology. We determined if cognitive reserve attenuates the associations of vascular brain lesions with worse cognition in persons with subjective concerns or mild impairment. We analyzed 200 participants aged 50-90 years from the Comprehensive Assessment of Neurodegeneration and Dementia (COMPASS-ND) study. Cognition was measured using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and a neuropsychological test battery. High vascular lesion burden was defined as two or more supratentorial infarcts or beginning confluent or confluent white matter hyperintensity. Cognitive reserve proxies included education, occupational attainment, marital status, social activities, physical activity, household income, and multilingualism. Mean age was 72.8 years and 48% were female; 73.5% had mild cognitive impairment and 26.5% had subjective concerns. Professional/managerial occupations, annual household income≥$60,000 per year, not being married/common law, and high physical activity were independently associated with higher cognition. Higher vascular lesion burden was associated with lower executive function, but the association was not modified by cognitive reserve. Markers of cognitive reserve are associated with higher cognition. Vascular lesion burden is associated with lower executive function. However, cognitive reserve does not mitigate the effects of vascular lesion burden on executive function. Public health efforts should focus on preventing vascular brain injury as well as promoting lifestyle factors related to cognitive reserve, as cognitive reserve alone may not mitigate the effects of vascular brain injury.

Reaction Time Based Cognitive Functions and Associated Recovery Heart Rate in Medical Student

Introduction: Physical activity is an indicator of physical function that preserve or promotes cerebral blood flow which in turn is associating with better functioning cognitive function. Cognitive functions can be assessed using reaction time. It is the ability to quick motor response to definite stimulus, while the time that elapses between the sensory stimulation and the motor activity.&#x0D; Aims: To assess the cognitive function of medical students using visual &amp; auditory reaction times in different fitness groups and to correlate values of reaction times to recovery heart rate.&#x0D; Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 57 consenting healthy medical students age 17-30 years, underwent 3-Minutes Step Test to assess their physical fitness along with Auditory reaction time and Visual reaction time to assess their cognitive function. Based on Recovery heart rate which was calculated after 3-Minute step test. Students were categorized into four groups that is good, satisfactory, poor and very poor their Auditory reaction time and Visual reaction time T were measured for these groups.&#x0D; Results: Results showed Auditory reaction time and Visual reaction time was statistically significant when all groups of physically fitness were compared (p-0.014). When pairs of groups were compared significant differences of Auditory reaction time was found good fitness level Vs very poor fitness level in Auditory reaction time (p0.008) and significant difference of Visual reaction time was found between good fitness level Vs satisfactory fitness level in Visual reaction time (p-0.028). Comparison of many other pairs of fitness groups found to be non-significant.&#x0D; Conclusion: Good fitness level has higher cognition which can be achieved by doing physical activity to improve the fitness level.

Intermittent Oxygen Fasting &amp; Digital Technologies: from Antistress &amp; Hormones Regulation to Wellbeing, Bliss &amp; higher Mental States

Low oxygen breathing has been the subject of considerable research in recent years. The present review aims to determine the physiological and neuropsychological benefits of low-oxygen training. Specifically, we explored the ways low oxygen affects hormones, neurotransmitters and growth factors responsible for neuroplasticity, higher cognition and positive emotions. In addition, we shed light on the importance of hypoxia to expand the conscious experience. Furthermore, we investigate the role of digital technologies in assisting hypoxic training. The results showed that oxygen deprivation, under certain circumstances, has beneficial effects on cognition, mood and consciousness. It was observed an increase in growth factors, which are responsible for tissue repair and regeneration. Hypoxia also was found to stimulate the hormones of pleasure, happiness, pain tolerance, socialization and relaxation. Interestingly, people under hypoxic conditions are more likely to have transcendental experiences -even to develop ‘superhuman’ abilities. Digital technologies facilitate the safe implementation of hypoxic training enabling users to take control of a powerful tool, which is none other than breathing. Metacognition in breathing can help people consciously and safely manipulate their breathing by moving themselves away from their comfort zone and exploring new pathways to rewire their brains and plumb the depths of their physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual potential.

Trajectory of rich club properties in structural brain networks.

Many organizational principles of structural brain networks are established before birth and undergo considerable developmental changes afterwards. These include the topologically central hub regions and a densely connected rich club. While several studies have mapped developmental trajectories of brain connectivity and brain network organization across childhood and adolescence, comparatively little is known about subsequent development over the course of the lifespan. Here, we present a cross‐sectional analysis of structural brain network development in N = 8066 participants aged 5–80 years. Across all brain regions, structural connectivity strength followed an “inverted‐U”‐shaped trajectory with vertex in the early 30s. Connectivity strength of hub regions showed a similar trajectory and the identity of hub regions remained stable across all age groups. While connectivity strength declined with advancing age, the organization of hub regions into a rich club did not only remain intact but became more pronounced, presumingly through a selected sparing of relevant connections from age‐related connectivity loss. The stability of rich club organization in the face of overall age‐related decline is consistent with a “first come, last served” model of neurodevelopment, where the first principles to develop are the last to decline with age. Rich club organization has been shown to be highly beneficial for communicability and higher cognition. A resilient rich club might thus be protective of a functional loss in late adulthood and represent a neural reserve to sustain cognitive functioning in the aging brain.

The use of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) screening tool to evaluate cognitive deficits in Lebanese in-patients with schizophrenia.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a brief cognitive impairment screening tool suitable for a rapid diagnosis of cognitive functioning. The primary objective was to examine the ability of the MoCA to detect cognitive impairment and functioning (autonomy and social cognition) among Lebanese patients with schizophrenia. The secondary objective was to evaluate factors related to cognition. A cross-sectional study conducted between July 2019 and Mars 2020 that enrolled 120 in-patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. The MoCA tool and the BACS were used to evaluate the patients' cognitive functioning. The MoCA adjusted total score was significantly correlated with the BACS total score (r=.72, p<.001). The cut-off value of the MoCA for detecting mild cognitive impairment was 21, moderate cognitive impairment was 20.50 and severe cognitive impairment was 19.5. The multivariable analysis showed that the MoCA total score and the BACS score resulted in a non-significant association with autonomy. Also, higher cognition (higher BACS) (B =.10, p<0.001) was significantly associated with a higher MoCA total score. However, higher depression (B=-.18, p=.02) and higher psychosis (B=-.04, p = .01) were significantly associated with lower MoCA. The Arabic version of the MoCA can be a useful tool for screening cognitive impairment in patients with schizophrenia.

Scaling up Predictive Processing to language with Construction Grammar

ABSTRACT Predictive Processing (PP) is an increasingly influential neurocognitive-computational framework. PP research has so far focused predominantly on lower level perceptual, motor, and various psychological phenomena. But PP seems to face a “scale-up challenge”: How can it be extended to conceptual thought, language, and other higher cognitive competencies? Compositionality, arguably a central feature of conceptual thought, cannot easily be accounted for in PP because it is not couched in terms of classical symbol processing. I argue, using the example of language, that there is no strong reason to think that PP cannot be scaled up to higher cognition. I suggest that the tacitly assumed common-sense conception of language as Generative Grammar (“folk linguistics”) and its notion of composition leads to the scale-up concerns. Fodor’s Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH) plays the role of a cognitive computational paradigm for folk linguistics. Therefore, we do not take LOTH as facing problems with higher cognition, at least with regard to compositionality. But PP can plausibly play the role of a cognitive-computational paradigm for an alternative conception of language, namely Construction Grammar. If Construction Grammar is a plausible alternative to folk linguistics, then PP is not in a worse position than LOTH.

The evolution of brain neuron numbers in amniotes

SignificanceThe evolution of brain processing capacity has traditionally been inferred from data on brain size. However, similarly sized brains of distantly related species can differ in the number and distribution of neurons, their basic computational units. Therefore, a finer-grained approach is needed to reveal the evolutionary paths to increased cognitive capacity. Using a new, comprehensive dataset, we analyzed brain cellular composition across amniotes. Compared to reptiles, mammals and birds have dramatically increased neuron numbers in the telencephalon and cerebellum, which are brain parts associated with higher cognition. Astoundingly, a phylogenetic analysis suggests that as few as four major changes in neuron-brain scaling in over 300 million years of evolution pave the way to intelligence in endothermic land vertebrates.