Learning from Others
By Nigel Paine
From a considerable body of research gained by observation of how apes process the complex navigation of treetops and branches, the neuroscientist, Dr Adam Kampff (2023) was able to assert that mammals deal with reality by creating a simulation of the world in which they live. This means that when they carry out tasks, such as jumping from tree to tree, the mental model they hold in their brain, allows them to anticipate each new element of the task instantly. An ape’s brain cannot work out from scratch how far, for example, a branch will bend when it is stepped upon, or the precise moment to step off that branch. That mental model of the branches held in the ape’s brain allows the animal to instantly choose the right moment to step on one branch and across onto the next one. To an observer, the ape appears to travel from tree to tree automatically and effortlessly. Those complex decisions about navigation are taken in real time, and in an area of the brain that requires little cognitive processing, or the journey would be impossibly fraught and extremely slow.
The simulation of the real world allows apes and other mammals to manage uncertainty and cope with unexpected events by attempting to predict what might happen by using the simulation or modifying it. As the the ape practices this activity again and again, the simulation gets better and more reliable. The signals are embedded into the motor cortex and become almost automatic and operate at a level beyond cognition.
Much in the way humans drive a vehicle almost unconsciously to the office or the shops, described by many as if being on ‘autopilot’, we have activities embedded in our brain that require little cognitive effort to achieve. It is a strangely unnerving experience to have arrived at a location with no memory of how we got there but also strangely reassuring!
These observations of apes, led Kampff to begin a series of experiments with rats. In the lab, rats were taught to play the drums. They learnt this relatively easily. But when Kampff switched off large parts of the rats’ cortex, he discovered that they could still perfectly well continue to play the drums without error. However, what the rats could not deal with, when parts of the brain were temporarily switched off, was any unexpected event that was not part of the simulation. Dealing with the unexpected needed a new or modified simulation, and that required the motor cortex to get involved. He demonstrated this by teaching rats how to climb a staircase. Once learnt, he made one or more of the steps unstable and therefore unpredictable. He found the rats with normal brains could adapt quickly to the new situation. However, the rats with the brain where the cortex was switched off could navigate the staircase until something unpredictable happened. At that point they were baffled and failed again and again at navigation.
What Dr Kampff discovered, when he translated that research to humans, was that human beings also use simulations of the world to survive. However humans alone as a species, have the ability to create, not an individual simulation of the world, but a group shared simulator. We learn from others’ experience and we do that predominantly through language, through observation and through mirror neurons that copy behaviours. The result is that humans have the ability to deal with far more complexity and can move faster to understand, or relate to, aspects of the world. It also explains why and how humans cooperate, and why they are able to build ever more complex machines. Kampff describes it thus:
"The reason we have (art, ideas and imagination) is because we found a way to build a group shared simulator and become a super intelligence.“ (BBC interview)
In other words, our success is predicated on our unique ability to connect deeply with other people. That is our secret sauce. Furthermore, Kampff’s ideas were reinforced when he explored research in Massachusetts, that tracked 700 people over 75 years across multiple generations. They, especially, looked at their lifetime accomplishments set against their continuing health and happiness. The conclusion was dramatic, the only predictor at age 50 of how happy and healthy any one of those people would be at aged 80 was "how many strong social contacts” they continued to have. In other words, our best medicine, and the source of our extraordinary intelligence is being able to work and interact with other people, particularly kind people. It follows logically, therefore, that organizations which maximise social connection, create opportunities for developing and enhancing that "group shared simulator“ will be more successful and more enduring than those that do not bother to do this or actively work against group work or free connections between staff and between staff and the milieu around the organization.