Burkart Judith M, Finkenwirth Christa
Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich - Irchel, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich - Irchel, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
Neurosci Res. 2015 Apr;93:8-19. doi: 10.1016/j.neures.2014.09.003. Epub 2014 Sep 19.
Marmosets are increasingly used as model species by both neuroscientists and evolutionary anthropologists, but with a different rationale for doing so. Whereas neuroscientists stress that marmosets share many cognitive traits with humans due to common descent, anthropologists stress those traits shared with marmosets - and callitrichid monkeys in general - due to convergent evolution, as a consequence of the cooperative breeding system that characterizes both humans and callitrichids. Similarities in socio-cognitive abilities due to convergence, rather than homology, raise the question whether these similarities also extend to the proximate regulatory mechanisms, which is particularly relevant for neuroscientific investigations. In this review, we first provide an overview of the convergent adaptations to cooperative breeding at the psychological and cognitive level in primates, which bear important implications for our understanding of human cognitive evolution. In the second part, we zoom in on two of these convergent adaptations, proactive prosociality and social learning, and compare their proximate regulation in marmosets and humans with regard to oxytocin and cognitive top down regulation. Our analysis suggests considerable similarity in these regulatory mechanisms presumably because the convergent traits emerged due to small motivational changes that define how pre-existing cognitive mechanisms are quantitatively combined. This finding reconciles the prima facie contradictory rationale for using marmosets as high priority model species in neuroscience and anthropology.
狨猴越来越多地被神经科学家和进化人类学家用作模式物种，但他们这样做的理由有所不同。神经科学家强调，由于共同的祖先，狨猴与人类具有许多认知特征；而人类学家则强调，由于趋同进化，人类与狨猴（以及一般的绢毛猴科猴子）共享这些特征，这是人类和绢毛猴科共同具有的合作繁殖系统的结果。由于趋同而非同源导致的社会认知能力的相似性，引发了一个问题，即这些相似性是否也延伸到了近端调节机制，这对神经科学研究尤为重要。在这篇综述中，我们首先概述了灵长类动物在心理和认知层面上对合作繁殖的趋同适应，这对我们理解人类认知进化具有重要意义。在第二部分中，我们聚焦于其中两种趋同适应，即主动亲社会性和社会学习，并比较它们在狨猴和人类中关于催产素和认知自上而下调节的近端调节。我们的分析表明，这些调节机制存在相当大的相似性，大概是因为趋同特征是由小的动机变化产生的，这些变化定义了如何定量组合现有的认知机制。这一发现调和了在神经科学和人类学中使用狨猴作为高优先级模式物种这一看似矛盾的理由。
