Abstract
From Galton to GWAS, the modern nature–nurture debate has remained rooted in a static conception of the human environment for the last 150 years. In reality, our environments are profoundly shaped by the cross-generational dynamics of cultural transmission, which channel human brain development into otherwise unreachable trajectories. In this talk, I describe a theoretical framework that describes the integration of these cumulative cultural dynamics with the study of cognitive development. I present evidence from statistical analysis of 60 years of global genetic data, cross-cultural analysis of internal representations, and computational analysis of cultural transmission within the AI framework of reinforcement learning, with implications for translational domains like psychopathology and education.
About the Speaker
Dr. Ryutaro Uchiyama is postdoctoral fellow at the Tübingen AI Center and Guest Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany. He was previously Research Fellow at the NTU–Cambridge Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised Cognition or CLIC, Singapore, and obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics. He combines insights from evolutionary biology, computational neuroscience, and cultural psychology to investigate the mutual shaping of the human mind and the cultural environment.
