Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness
Adaptive memory is the propensity of human memory to easily store and retrieve important information to deal with challenges related to the Pleistocene. Recent evidence shows that humans have had a multiregional evolution across the African continent, including the rainforests and deciduous forests;...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 |
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crplos:10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 2024-05-19T07:49:39+00:00 Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness Moura, Joelson Moreno Brito Henriques da Silva, Risoneide Soares Ferreira Júnior, Washington Cristina da Silva, Taline Albuquerque, Ulysses Paulino Jonason, Peter Karl CAPES FACEPE 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 en eng Public Library of Science (PLoS) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ PLOS ONE volume 16, issue 10, page e0258986 ISSN 1932-6203 journal-article 2021 crplos https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 2024-05-01T06:57:28Z Adaptive memory is the propensity of human memory to easily store and retrieve important information to deal with challenges related to the Pleistocene. Recent evidence shows that humans have had a multiregional evolution across the African continent, including the rainforests and deciduous forests; however, there is little evidence regarding the implications of these origins and the relevant and recurring challenges of these environments on survival processing advantage in memory. In this study, we conducted an experiment with volunteers to analyze whether adaptive memory operates in the retrieval of important information to solve challenges of using medicinal plants to treat diseases in the ancestral environments of the savanna, rainforests, and deciduous forests compared to the modern environments of desert, tundra, coniferous forest, and urban areas. We used simulated survival environments and asked volunteers (30 per simulated scenario) to imagine themselves sick in one of these environments, and needing to find medicinal plants to treat their disease. The volunteers rated the relevance of 32 words to solve this challenge, followed by a surprise memory test. Our results showed no ancestral priority in recalling relevant information, as both ancestral and modern environments showed a similar recall of relevant information. This suggests that the evolved cognitive apparatus allows human beings to survive and can create survival strategies to face challenges imposed in various environments. We believe that this is only possible if the human mind operates through a flexible cognitive mechanism. This flexibility can reflect, for example, the different environments that the first hominids inhabited and the different dangerous situations that they faced. Article in Journal/Newspaper Tundra PLOS PLOS ONE 16 10 e0258986 |
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Adaptive memory is the propensity of human memory to easily store and retrieve important information to deal with challenges related to the Pleistocene. Recent evidence shows that humans have had a multiregional evolution across the African continent, including the rainforests and deciduous forests; however, there is little evidence regarding the implications of these origins and the relevant and recurring challenges of these environments on survival processing advantage in memory. In this study, we conducted an experiment with volunteers to analyze whether adaptive memory operates in the retrieval of important information to solve challenges of using medicinal plants to treat diseases in the ancestral environments of the savanna, rainforests, and deciduous forests compared to the modern environments of desert, tundra, coniferous forest, and urban areas. We used simulated survival environments and asked volunteers (30 per simulated scenario) to imagine themselves sick in one of these environments, and needing to find medicinal plants to treat their disease. The volunteers rated the relevance of 32 words to solve this challenge, followed by a surprise memory test. Our results showed no ancestral priority in recalling relevant information, as both ancestral and modern environments showed a similar recall of relevant information. This suggests that the evolved cognitive apparatus allows human beings to survive and can create survival strategies to face challenges imposed in various environments. We believe that this is only possible if the human mind operates through a flexible cognitive mechanism. This flexibility can reflect, for example, the different environments that the first hominids inhabited and the different dangerous situations that they faced. |
author2 |
Jonason, Peter Karl CAPES FACEPE |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Moura, Joelson Moreno Brito Henriques da Silva, Risoneide Soares Ferreira Júnior, Washington Cristina da Silva, Taline Albuquerque, Ulysses Paulino |
spellingShingle |
Moura, Joelson Moreno Brito Henriques da Silva, Risoneide Soares Ferreira Júnior, Washington Cristina da Silva, Taline Albuquerque, Ulysses Paulino Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
author_facet |
Moura, Joelson Moreno Brito Henriques da Silva, Risoneide Soares Ferreira Júnior, Washington Cristina da Silva, Taline Albuquerque, Ulysses Paulino |
author_sort |
Moura, Joelson Moreno Brito |
title |
Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
title_short |
Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
title_full |
Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
title_fullStr |
Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
title_full_unstemmed |
Memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
title_sort |
memory for medicinal plants remains in ancient and modern environments suggesting an evolved adaptedness |
publisher |
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 |
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Tundra |
genre_facet |
Tundra |
op_source |
PLOS ONE volume 16, issue 10, page e0258986 ISSN 1932-6203 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258986 |
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PLOS ONE |
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16 |
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10 |
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e0258986 |
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