Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes

Snakes and their relationships with humans and other primates have attracted broad attention from multiple fields of study, but not, surprisingly, from neuroscience, despite the involvement of the visual system and strong behavioral and physiological evidence that humans and other primates can detec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 110; no. 47; p. 19000
Main Authors: Van Le, Quan, Isbell, Lynne A, Matsumoto, Jumpei, Nguyen, Minh, Hori, Etsuro, Maior, Rafael S, Tomaz, Carlos, Tran, Anh Hai, Ono, Taketoshi, Nishijo, Hisao
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 19.11.2013
Subjects:
Adaptation, Biological - physiology
Analysis of Variance
Animals
Biological Evolution
Macaca - anatomy & histology
Macaca - physiology
Models, Biological
Neurons - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Pulvinar - cytology
Pulvinar - physiology
Reaction Time
Recognition, Psychology - physiology
Snakes
Visual Perception - physiology
Snake Detection Theory
visual responses
evolution
low-pass filtered images
ISSN:1091-6490, 1091-6490
Online Access:Get more information
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Snakes and their relationships with humans and other primates have attracted broad attention from multiple fields of study, but not, surprisingly, from neuroscience, despite the involvement of the visual system and strong behavioral and physiological evidence that humans and other primates can detect snakes faster than innocuous objects. Here, we report the existence of neurons in the primate medial and dorsolateral pulvinar that respond selectively to visual images of snakes. Compared with three other categories of stimuli (monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometrical shapes), snakes elicited the strongest, fastest responses, and the responses were not reduced by low spatial filtering. These findings integrate neuroscience with evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, herpetology, and primatology by identifying a neurobiological basis for primates' heightened visual sensitivity to snakes, and adding a crucial component to the growing evolutionary perspective that snakes have long shaped our primate lineage.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1091-6490
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1312648110