Birds learn to fly easily because of the latent memories left behind in their brains by their ancestors, according to a new study by a psychologist from the University of Sheffield.
Washington, Aug 15 : Birds learn to fly easily because of the latent memories left behind in their brains by their ancestors, according to a new study by a psychologist from the University of Sheffield.
Dr Jim Stone from the university's Department of Psychology used simple models of brains called artificial neural networks and computer simulations to test his theory.
He discovered that learning in previous generations indirectly induced the formation of a latent memory in the current generation and decreased the amount of learning required.
"These effects are especially pronounced if there is a large biological 'fitness cost' to learning, where biological fitness is measured in terms of the number of offspring each individual has. The beneficial effects of learning also depend on the unusual form of information storage in neural networks," Dr Stone wrote in his study in PLoS Computational Biology.
He said also unlike in computers, which store each item of information in a specific location in the computer's memory chip, neural networks store information with each item distributed over many neuronal connections.
"If information is stored in this way then evolution is accelerated, explaining how complex motor skills, such as nest building and hunting skills, are acquired by a combination of innate ability and learning over many generations," the study said.
"This new theory has its roots in ideas proposed by James Baldwin in 1896, who made the counter-intuitive argument that learning within each generation could guide evolution of innate behaviour over future generations. Baldwin was right, but in ways more subtle than he could have imagined because concepts such as artificial neural networks and distributed representations were not known in his time," said Dr Stone.
ANI