![]() ![]() We review herein our current state of knowledge of the cellular events, and intrinsic and extrinsic cues that regulate neocortical development, focusing on the specification and differentiation of neuronal and glial cell types and highlighting the murine brain, where most of these studies have been performed. , 2014 Polleux and Lauder, 2004 Sequeira and Turecki, 2006). For instance, an imbalance in the ratio of the two main neuronal types that make up the neocortex-excitatory glutamatergic projection neurons and inhibitory gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic interneurons, or an alteration of oligodendrocyte number, the myelinating cells in the central nervous system (CNS), is associated with various neuropsychological diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mood disorders, as well as intellectual diseases such as autism ( Chomiak and Hu, 2013 Le-Niculescu et al. However, studies over the past several decades have led to significant insights into how this region of the brain develops, providing further clarity around the relationship between structural and functional deficits. It is thus a formidable challenge to understand how neocortical function is undermined by neuropsychological diseases and other disorders that affect cognitive performance. Because of this complexity, we have limited insight into how individual neocortical regions contribute to complex cognitive functions ( Brett et al. , 2009 Pakkenberg and Gundersen, 1997 Williams and Herrup, 1988), each receiving from thousands to tens of thousands of synaptic inputs ( DeFelipe et al. The neocortex is probably the most complex anatomical structure known, with an estimated 15–20 billion neurons in humans ( Azevedo et al. Our defining cognitive abilities emerge from the neocortex, a region of the brain that is nonetheless shared with all other mammals. The capacity for learning, language, creativity, reasoning, and sentience exhibited by the human species is singular within the animal kingdom. Carol Schuurmans, in International Review of Cell and Molecular Biology, 2018 1 Introduction Although we tend to view humans as having the full range and depth of sentience, it is important to acknowledge the possibility that other animals might have properties of sentience that humans lack. The study of sentience in other animals is tantamount to determining how many of, and to what extent, these capacities are shared. In normal adult human beings, all three of these capacities are found to some extent. Sentience refers to any of these psychological phenomena. ToM is others oriented, related to one’s ability to take the physical and mental perspective of others, and is presumably underwritten by metacognition. And third, Theory of Mind ( ToM) comprises capacities, such as perspective-taking, modeling of others’ mental lives, including empathy. Second, metacognition is the ability to think about, or reflect upon, one’s own thoughts and feelings, and is clearly underwritten by self-awareness in the psychological realm but not necessarily by self-awareness in the physical realm (i.e., self-recognition). Self-awareness may exist at a physical level, referred to as self-recognition, to more abstract levels of psychological continuity through time. First, self-awareness is a sense of personal, particularly autobiographical, identity. ![]() The first two have to do with one’s awareness of self, physically and/or mentally. It is becoming increasingly clear from the accumulating evidence that these three domains are not a cognitive ‘package’ despite our still-limited knowledge, at this point, they appear to be separable related capacities. Do they think about themselves the way we do? Do they ponder their own lives? Do they know that other individuals have feelings and thoughts? And, do they have an autobiographical sense of the past and future?Īt its most cognitively sophisticated levels, sentience may be conceptualized in the context of three related psychological domains or capacities. When we ask about sentience in other animals, we are asking whether their phenomenological experience is similar to our own. Sentience is a multidimensional subjective phenomenon that refers to the depth of awareness an individual possesses about himself or herself and others. Marino, in Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, 2010 Introduction and Definitions
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