Université de Strasbourg

Kyoto Lecture: Origin of the human mind viewed from the study of chimpanzees

November 30, 2016
From 15:30 until 17:00
Auditorium ISIS - Strasbourg

By Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Distinguished Professor, Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study


The lecture of Professor Matsuzawa is part of the Kyoto Lectures Series.

Places are limited, registration is now closed.

Origin of the human mind viewed from the study of chimpanzees

What is uniquely human? Where did we come from? To answer to those questions I have compared cognitive development in humans with that of chimpanzees. The laboratory study is known as Ai project since 1977, and the field study has been carried out in Bossou-Nimba, Guinea-Conakry, since 1986.

Humans and chimpanzees are largely similar at early developmental stages, however, there remain several crucial differences. In comparison to humans, chimpanzees are poor in the social referencing ability and have been very rarely observed to engage in general imitation and active teaching. Young chimpanzees possess exceptional working memory capacities often superior to those of human adults. In contrast, their ability to learn the meaning of symbols is relatively poor.

Boussou Jire familyHuman infants are typically raised by more than one adult, not only the mother, but also the father, siblings, grandparents, and the other members of the community. The human infant is characterized by the stable supine posture of the neonate that enables face-to-face communication via facial expressions, vocal exchange, manual gestures, and object manipulation because both hands are free. The stable supine posture makes us human. The development of social cognition in humans may be integrally linked to this mother-infant relationship and the species-specific way of rearing the children.

In sum, based on the parallel effort of the fieldwork and the laboratory work of chimpanzees, I present possible evolutionary and ontogenetic explanations for aspects of cognition that are uniquely human.

For further information, please see: www.matsuzawa.kyoto

Tetsuro Matsuzawa

Pr Tetsuro MatsuzawaProfessor Matsuzawa has been studying chimpanzees both in the laboratory and in the wild. The laboratory work is known as “Ai-project" in the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University since 1976: a female chimpanzee named Ai learned to use Arabic numerals to represent the number (Matsuzawa, 1985, Nature). The field work has been carried out in Bossou-Nimba, Guinea, since 1986, focusing on tool use in the wild.

Matsuzawa tries to synthesize field work and lab work to understand the mind of chimpanzees, and to gain more insight into the evolutionary origins of human mind. He has published close to 200 scientific papers and published several books, including “Primate origins of human cognition and behavior" (2001), “Cognitive development in chimpanzees" (2006), “The chimpanzees of Bossou and Nimba" (2011). He as awarded numerous prizes including the Jane Goodall Award in 2001, the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2004, and the Person of Cultural Merit in 2013.

The lecture of Professor Matsuzawa is part of the Kyoto Lectures Series, organised to celebrate 25 years of close ties between the University of Strasbourg and Kyoto University.

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