#kerygmachela

[carbohs-region]

Kerycorvolt, the Electrosensory Pokémon!

Type: Psychic/Electric

Evolves from Quivereme

Its claw flaps having sharpened into blades, Kerycorvolt now attacks and hunts larger Pokémon than ever. The enlarged nerve cluster at the end of its tail can generate enough electric charge to even incapacitate some the largest Pokémon of the time.

[ms-scarletwings]

Every Dredge Aberration (2024), Part 11

Out of depths came the restless arms and hungry eyes

that caressed the flotsam’s folly in greeting.

A picture of two worlds so close to meeting,

until suddenly they were sent retreating

Once they heard the familiar alarm in siren’s mechanical cries. ₊˚.༄

Xeno Xeno ˚.༄

Encyclopedia #165

Aberrant form of mahi-mahi

Description:

Horns of bone caress green-veined spheres. Vestigal fins and a shrivelled tail are all that remains of the progenitor.

Comment: The XX specimen bears an entrancing pigmentation and appears to function as yet another drained quiverful of a nameless horror’s scions. Other than this, there isn’t much remarkable to really note about this abomination. A new phrasing for an old observation. A new display of the continuing pattern we truly do not tire of. However, the deterioration of the fins does interest me some in what this creature was intended to spend its last days exactly doing- using these new cysts to drift closer to our world, or submit to dawdle along depths, none can yet say.

How to catch: I hope you haven’t yet grown tired of your new line of rods; you still have a long way to go before you’ve exhausted their usefulness. When you find those opalescent spills on your return to the Stellar Basin, cast to the oceanic depths once more.

Stalking Spiderfish ˚.༄

Encyclopedia #166

Aberrant form of tripod spiderfish

Description:

A simple mouth caps the end of a crumpled, tubular body. Hand-like fins are ratcheted tense, waiting to strike.

Comment: While looks can cause quite an alarm, I assure you that this aberrant is none much changed at all from the habits of the abyssal tripod fish. Proof again those who already live closest to that final barrier may be the most suited to adapt when that veil is casted off.

How to catch: Another plunge of advanced tools, further this time, into the waters of endless night.

Drifting Chrystalis ˚.༄

Encyclopedia #167

Aberrant form of Kerygmachela

Description:

A testing tendril flicks at the water around it. Tasting. Analyzing. The walls of the chrysalis begin to weaken.

Comment: Some boxes are best left unopened; some sights are best left only before blind eyes. Already they wonder if the world is ready to behold their maturity, if it is the world that will welcome them. Your duty is to assure them it isn’t just yet.

How to catch: Again, even further now. To the hadal trenches.

Sanguine Shark ˚.༄

Encyclopedia #168

Aberrant form of eagle shark

Description:

Muscles stretch into ribboned wings, soaring over the dark domain. Sacs of fluid grow, then fall, seeking a new host.

Comment: I’d have to say the most wicked seeming of the new aberrants so far. A deliverer of an underplace’s corruption that fully looks the part. It hasn’t only embraced the ichor’s gift, but cycles again to spread it to the still pure. Powerful wings become more suited to its task in the waves, and hopefully never the skies.

How to catch: Your aim returns back to the oceanic depths in your new hunt for this oiled demon.

[newlabdakos]

Opabinia regalis

(temporal range: 508 mio. years ago)

[text from the Wikipedia article, see also link above]

Opabinia regalis is an extinct, stem group arthropod found in the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale Lagerstätte (505 million years ago) of British Columbia.[1] Opabinia was a soft-bodied animal, measuring up to 7 cm in body length, and its segmented trunk had flaps along the sides and a fan-shaped tail. The head shows unusual features: five eyes, a mouth under the head and facing backwards, and a clawed proboscis that probably passed food to the mouth. Opabinia probably lived on the seafloor, using the proboscis to seek out small, soft food.[2] Fewer than twenty good specimens have been described; 3 specimens of Opabinia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they constitute less than 0.1% of the community.[3]

When the first thorough examination of Opabinia in 1975 revealed its unusual features, it was thought to be unrelated to any known phylum,[4] or perhaps a relative of arthropod and annelid ancestors.[2] However, later studies since late 1990s consistently support its affinity as a member of basal arthropods, alongside the closely-related radiodonts (Anomalocaris and relatives) and gilled lobopodians (Kerygmachela and Pambdelurion).[5][6][7][8][1][9][10]

In the 1970s, there was an ongoing debate about whether multi-celled animals appeared suddenly during the Early Cambrian, in an event called the Cambrian explosion, or had arisen earlier but without leaving fossils. At first Opabinia was regarded as strong evidence for the "explosive" hypothesis.[4] Later the discovery of a whole series of similar lobopodian animals, some with closer resemblances to arthropods, and the development of the idea of stem groups suggested that the Early Cambrian was a time of relatively fast evolution but one that could be understood without assuming any unique evolutionary processes.

[priestofberath]

Anomalocaris tribute. Opabinia tribute. Hurdia tribute. Aegirocassis tribute. Kerygmachela tribute. Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the

[bacony-cakes]

opabinia

anomalocaris

wiwaxia

rotadiscus

hallucigenia

diania

nectocaris

aegirocassis

hurdia

caryosyntrips

kerygmachela

you can't not love them all

[alphynix]

Cambrian Explosion #41: Dinocaridida

Probably evolving from Siberion-like lobopodians, the dinocaridids were an "evolutionary grade" of panarthropods that were closely related to the ancestors of true arthropods. These animals were characterized by specialized front appendages on their heads and large swimming lobes along the sides of their segmented bodies, and their group included some of the most famous of the Cambrian "weird wonders".

The earliest branches of the dinocaridids were the "gilled lobopodians", which had lobopodian-like legs on their undersides and gills on the upper surfaces of their body lobes. The flap-like structures may have initially evolved just to provide a larger surface area for respiration, but they were quickly co-opted for swimming purposes and opened up a whole new range of ecological opportunities to the ancestral dinocaridids.

———

Kerygmachela kierkegaardi from the Sirius Passet fossil deposits in Greenland (~518 million years ago) is one of the best-understood gilled lobopodians, known from around 15 specimens.

It had a pair of slit-shaped compound eyes underneath the bases of its spiny front appendages, along with another pair of small structures at the front of its head that may have been additional simple eyes. Its total length was about 17cm (~7"), and it had 11 body segments with rows of bumpy ornamentation along its back, gill-bearing flaps at its sides, small lobopod-like legs on its underside, and a single long tail spine.

It may have been an active predator snaring prey with its front appendages, although its small mouth size suggests it was restricted to feeding on fairly small planktonic animals.

The closely-related gilled lobopodian Pambdelurion is also known from the same location as Kerygmachela, and had comb-like spines on its front appendages that suggest it may have been a filter-feeder. Another similar animal from the Chinese Chengjiang fossil deposits (~518 million years ago) known as "Parvibellus" may also be related, but as of the time of this post its description hasn't yet been peer-reviewed or formally published.

———

And we can't have a Cambrian series without including one of the most charismatic and bizarre-looking early dinocaridids: Opabinia regalis.

Known from the Canadian Burgess Shale deposits (~508 million years ago), this 7cm-long animal (~1.5-2.75") seemed so strange when it was first properly reconstructed in the 1970s that the audience at the presentation laughed. With no evolutionary context for such an alien-looking creature at the time, it was initially assumed to be a "failed experiment" unrelated to any modern animal phyla – until later discoveries of similar Cambrian animals helped properly place it as a close relative of the "gilled lobopodians" and radiodonts.

It had five large stalked eyes on its head and a long flexible proboscis (resembling a vacuum cleaner hose) with a pincer-like structure at the tip, probably derived from a pair of fused grasping front appendages. Its backward-facing mouth was located on the bottom of its head, behind the base of its proboscis, and the rest of its segmented body had 15 pairs of overlapping swimming lobes and a three-part tail fan. Small triangular structures preserved on its underside may have been lobopodian-like legs.

It was probably a bottom-feeding predator or a detritivore, swimming along above the seafloor using its proboscis to probe around, snatching up small soft prey or organic material and then passing it up to its mouth. If the "triangles" on its underside were legs then it may also have been able to walk.

Its fossils are quite rare in the Burgess Shale, with only a few good specimens known, either due to it already being a very rare member of the ecosystem or because its free-swimming lifestyle made it so much less likely to be preserved.

And while we now know where it fits into the panarthropod family tree, Opabinia is surprisingly alone in its spot between the "gilled lobopodians" and radiodonts. No other close relatives have been found, no similarly trunked many-eyed weirdos… with a couple of possible exceptions.

The slightly older Myoscolex from the Australian Emu Bay Shale (~514 million years ago) may be a close relative of Opabinia, although the specimen is rather ambiguous and this interpretation is controversial, and it might instead be a polychaete worm. Additionally a not-yet-formally-named fossil from the Wheeler Shale in Utah, USA (~507 million years ago) may also represent a new opabiniid.

EDIT: The Wheeler opabiniid has been named, and it’s now called Utaurora comosa!

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[geopolicraticus]

A Counterfactual on Central Nervous System Development

Reconstruction of Kerygmachela kierkegaardi. a Dorsal reconstruction of the head region with the central nervous system (orange), anterior neural projection (yellow), and muscular pharynx (blue). b Artistic reconstruction of K. kierkegaardi. el eye lobe, mo mouth opening, nap anterior neural projection, nb branching of nerve, nc nerve cord, nfa frontal appendage nervous tract, npc protocerebrum, nop optic nerve, phr pharynx. Artwork by Rebecca Gelernter, nearbirdstudios.com (The picture and this text are copied from the paper linked below)

As more fossils are discovered preserving the fine structure of the central nervous systems (CNS) of early forms of life (and we are finding more of these now because we know what to look for), we are gaining more insight into the evolution of the brain, and understanding the evolution of the brain is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the evolution of mind and consciousness.

Some time ago in How early a mind? I discussed the incredibly detailed fossil of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis; now the well preserved remains of Kerygmachela kierkegaardi are offering further insights into CNS evolution. We might call these and similar fossils the Lagerstätten of the mind. 

The paper detailing this most recent discovery is, as of this writing, freely available (download it while it’s available): “Brain and eyes of Kerygmachela reveal protocerebral ancestry of the panarthropod head” by Tae-Yoon S. Park, Ji-Hoon Kihm, Jusun Woo, Changkun Park, Won Young Lee, M. Paul Smith, David A. T. Harper, Fletcher Young, Arne T. Nielsen and Jakob Vinther.

The report on the discovery in Science magazine -- This ancestor of today’s insects, spiders, and crustaceans had a simple brain, but complex eyes, by Elizabeth Pennisi -- caught my attention. By “simple brain” it was meant that this ancestor to insects did not have the tripartite brain that contemporary insects have, with each part of the brain associated with one of the segments of the body. However, the idea of a simple brain and complex senses immediately suggested a counterfactual to me.

Suppose that some early animal developed the locus of its CNS not in an independent organ, but attached to or integral with its major sensory organ. This would result in a brain even more dominated by a particular sense than the way in which the human brain is dominated by sight and the canine brain is dominated by smell. Suppose that our brains grew from the back of our eyes, with the retina integrated directly into the brain (but probably wired up like in cephalopods instead of the awkward inside-out nerves of the mammalian eye), and that this came about as a result of the locus of a CNS developing at or on a complex sensory organ.  

This isn’t how brains evolved on Earth, and, significantly, this is not only a counterfactual for us, but a counterfactual across terrestrial forms of life, as true of arthropods and cephalopods as of vertebrates -- perhaps this indicates an evo-devo tendency in Earth life to evolve a separate brain. Although it didn’t happen here, it could happen elsewhere. Sensory organs are natural clusters of nerves, and it wouldn’t take much of an evolutionary nudge for these clusters of nerves to grow into a brain, especially in an early form of life in which there is relatively little differentiation of nervous tissues.

What might it be like for an animal to evolve with a “smart” sensory organ? What is the sensory signals from you other organs had to pass through another sensory organ on their way to being processed by the brain? How differently would such an animal perceive and conceive the world as compared to life on Earth?

Above is another Anomalocaris fossil, not associated with the paper discussed above and the new discoveries it details. 

[crober36]

Here is Kerygmachela’s swimming animation test with the controllers displayed. 11/11/19

[fistfulofgammarays]

Tagged by @theladyw.

Rules: answer the 20 questions and tag 20 amazing followers you would like to get to know better.

Name: fistfulofgammarays, for tumblr purposes. Nickname: gamma Zodiac sign: taurus Height: 5′5″ Orientation: I generally like women. I like to think if I developed a romantic attraction to a dude, I’d take it in stride, but it hasn’t happened yet. But overall, my level of interest in dating and sex is such that it’s usually a complete non-entity on my list of priorities. Ethnicity: Pasty white European mutt Favorite fruit: Man. Maybe clementines? Or pears? Or cantaloupes? I really like fruit. Favorite season: Summer. Favorite book series: Maybe the Riddlemaster series? Favorite flower: Irises. Not flowers, but I like nepenthes too. Favorite scent: Petrichor.  Favorite color: Grey, green. Favorite animals: Can I nominate extinct animals? Opabinia regalis or Kerygmachela kierkegaardi. If not, maybe oarfish or cheetahs for their weird proportions? Coffee, tea or cocoa: Coffee or tea. I’ll take either, depending on circumstances. Average sleep hours: 4-6 on weeknights, around 7 on weekends. Cat or dog person: Cats. I like dogs, but cats understand the concept of personal space. (In theory, at least.) Favorite fictional characters: Still fond of Shepard and Garrus. Sam Vimes. Motoko Kusanagi. Number of blankets you sleep with: 2-3 in the summer, 5-8 in the winter. Dream trip: Macchu Picchu. Hawaii. I want to go back to Spain. Finland.  Blog created: Uh. Not sure. 2011, maybe? Number of followers: 331. Lots of those are probably bots, though.

As usual, I’m breaking the rules and saying anyone who wants to be tagged on this is.

[asmrage]

Life Before the Dinosaurs: Kerygmachela.

[ezatluba]

Fossilized Brains of Ancient 'Sea Monster' Discovered in Greenland

By Laura Geggel

March 15, 2018

The discovery of not just one, but 15 fossilized brains from a 520-million-year-old marine predator is helping scientists understand how ancient brains evolved into the complex command centers they are today.

The creature in question, Kerygmachela kierkegaardi — a bizarre, oval-shaped water beast that had two long appendages on its head, 11 swimming flaps on each side and a skinny tail — isn't new to science, but its brain is, said study co-lead researcher Jakob Vinther, a United Kingdom-based paleontologist.

The animal would have been up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) long, based on the findings. And unlike the human brain, which is divided into three segments, the fossilized brain of this predator was simple, with just a single segment. This means that the brain was less complex than the three-segmented brains seen in the creature's distant, arthropod relatives, such as spiders, lobsters and butterflies, Vinther said. [Photos: Ancient Sea Monster Was One of Largest Arthropods]

Strange News Snapshot: Week of Mar. 18, 2018Possible alien skeletons, cocaine is everywhere, and a company wants to revive your long after death? Check out this week's Strange News Snapshot for the full, crazy stories.

This one-segmented brain finding is significant, and not just because it's one of the oldest fossilized brains on record. Until now, many researchers thought that the common ancestor of all vertebrates and arthropods had a three-segmented brain, Vinther said. But K. kierkegaardi's simple brainshows that this is not the case.

Despite its simplicity, K. kierkegaardi's brain helped the predator survive during the Cambrian explosion, an event that began more than 540 million years ago when a burst of life emerged on Earth. The now-extinct creature used its 11 pairs of flaps to swim through the water, hunting for prey. An anatomical analysis showed that K. kierkegaardi's brain innervated the creature's large eyes and the frontal appendages it used to grasp its tasty victims, the researchers said.

These sizable eyes also shed light on arthropod evolution, said Vinther and study co-lead researcher Tae-Yoon Park, a paleontologist at the Korea Polar Research Institute.

"[Its eyes] form an intermediate step between more-simple eyes in [modern] distant relatives, such as velvet worms and water bears [also called tardigrades], and the very, very complex eyes of arthropods," which sometimes sit on the end of eyestalks, Vinther said.

The researchers found the K. kierkegaardi fossils in the Buen Formation of Sirius Passet, North Greenland, in 2011 and 2016. These are the first-known fossilized brains found at this site, and they show that "fossil brains and nervous systems are much more commonplace than hitherto thought," Vinther said.

[bitchinscience]

Live Science

Fossilized Brains of Ancient 'Sea Monster' Discovered in Greenland Live Science The discovery of not just one, but 15 fossilized brains from a 520-million-year-old marine predator is helping scientists understand how ancient brains evolved into the complex command centers they are today. The creature in question, Kerygmachela ...

[spicefacts-blog]

Ancient brain of fossilised sea monster is found in Greenland

Ancient brain of fossilised sea monster is found in Greenland

[ad_1]

The half a billion-year-old brains and nervous systems of 15 ancestors of modern-day spiders and insects  have been found in the frozen shale of Greenland.

The brains and nervous tissue belong to a type of marine predator known as Kerygmachela kierkegaardi�� which existed around 521 and 514 million years ago.

These sea monsters are believed to have had two long appendages on their head, 11…

[usviraltrends-blog]

New Post has been published on https://usviraltrends.com/this-ancestor-of-todays-insects-spiders-and-crustaceans-had-a-simple-brain-but-complex-eyes-science/

This ancestor of today’s insects, spiders, and crustaceans had a simple brain, but complex eyes | Science

T. S. Park et al./Nature Communications, 10.1038

By Elizabeth PennisiMar. 9, 2018 , 5:20 PM

Although it’s hard to believe that delicate nervous tissues could persist for hundreds of millions of years, that’s exactly what happened to the brains and eyes of some 15 ancestors of modern-day spiders and lobsters, called Kerygmachela kierkegaardi (after the famous philosopher Søren Kierkegaard). Found along the coast of north Greenland, the 518-million-year-old fossils contained enough preserved brains and eyes to help researchers write a brand-new history of the arthropod nervous system.

Until now, many biologists had argued that ancient arthropods—which gave rise to today’s insects, spiders, and crustaceans—had a three-part brain and very simple eyes. Compound eyes, in which the “eye” is really a cluster of many smaller eyes, supposedly evolved later from a pair of legs that moved into the head and was modified to sense light.

But these new fossils, which range from a few centimeters to 30 centimeters long, had a tiny, unsegmented brain, akin to what’s seen in modern velvet worms, researchers report today in Nature Communications. Despite the simple brain, Kerygmachela’s eyes were probably complex, perhaps enough to form rudimentary images. The eyes, indicated by shiny spots in the fossil’s small head, appear to be duplicated versions of the small, simple eyes seen today in soft, primitive arthropods called water bears and velvet worms.

[crober36]

Here is the updated version of the Kerygmachela or “pinchy guy” based on the redline done by Devin. 10/7/19

[geopolicraticus]

Cognitive Descent with Modification

As a further elaboration of the argument I made in The Archetypal Age and the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, in which I posited a Archetypal Age that coincides with the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA), there is more than needs to be said in regard to the observation with which I finished that post:

The conditions under which an archetypal change came about—the EEA of the archetype—would shape that archetype, and the new successor species would respond to different archetypal symbols, and different narratives would resonate in the psyche of such a being.

...and I added...

In actual practice, it would be a little more complex than this. It not likely that there would be a sharp break with the human archetype, but rather there would be an overlap between the human archetype and the transhuman or post-human archetype, so that some aspects of human depth psychology would carry to our successors, some aspects would not carry over, and some aspects would be carried over but substantially modified by the transition. Almost certainly this is what happened when homo sapiens speciated from human ancestors, but at that time the development of the mind and the capacity of thought on behalf of the genus homo was at a much lower level than it is now, so that a change in conceptual framework would have been less in evident.

As any human being—or, for that matter, any biological individual with a brain in the terrestrial biosphere—is inseparably both mind and body, with each acting upon the other, cognitive speciation as represented in cognitive modernity cannot be cleanly separated from corporeal speciation, and vice versa. We see this clearly, for example, in sexual selection, when a mate is selected for reproduction on the basis of a judgment made by one or both of the parties involved. Mind can impact the development of our bodily evolution, and the body can impact the development of our minds.

And our minds are not blank slates, but are related to the previous minds that preceded it in those organisms from which we inherit that which we are, both bodily and cognitively. While the blank slate doctrine has come in for considerable criticism and is widely viewed as untenable, I don’t think that we have fully drawn the conclusions that we need to draw if the human mind is not a blank slate.

It is a contemporary commonplace that the human brain consists of a reptilian hindbrain, a mammalian mid-brain, which includes the limbic system, and the neocortex, which in large mammals like human beings, whales, and elephants has grown exponentially, and it is this development of the neocortex that is primarily responsible for human intelligence, hence human cognition. This is, of course, a bit of an oversimplification, but it gets the point across that the brain evolves, and especially the brain grows by adding on to itself, and by adding to itself and increasing its capacities, it does not rid itself of older brain structures, which continue to be inherited by subsequent descendants.

I argue that it is not merely older brain structures that are inherited from our ancestors, but also the cognition associated with these brain structures. This is widely recognized in regard to instinctual behaviors, which we understand can be traced into the deep past of life on Earth, but it is less widely recognized when we place these behaviors in relation to cognition. If we understand behaviors and cognition to be related (and this relation in itself is the hoary philosophical question of the mind-body problem), then inherited behaviors also means inherited forms of cognition. 

I have previously discussed the deep history of the brain and the central nervous system (CNS) in How Early a Mind? and A Counterfactual on Central Nervous System Development. These posts were inspired by the discovery of early fossilized CNSs, specifically, by two papers discussing such discoveries, “Fuxianhuiid ventral nerve cord and early nervous system evolution in Panarthropoda” and “Brain and eyes of Kerygmachela reveal protocerebral ancestry of the panarthropod head.”  

What evolutionary developmental biology (more commonly known as “Evo-Devo”) has taught us, inter alia, is that there is often a deep genetic homology that drives the repetitive appearance of structures in terrestrial life across apparently diverse clades. This deep genetic homology ultimate goes back to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), which contained within it the seeds of all later life on Earth. Might this homology also extend to the cognition that supervenes upon homologous brain and CNS structures?

The brain and the CNS have a deep history in the biosphere as revealed in the fossil evidence. While it might be too much to attribute consciousness to panarthropoda, at some point in the history of life on Earth, brains and CNSs became sufficiently complex that rudimentary forms of consciousness and cognition emerged. With consciousness and cognition comes the possibility of what I called cognitive speciation. (I previously discussed cognitive speciation, which implies mechanisms of cognitive selection, in The Overview Effect over the longue durée).

Cognitive modernity is a particular instance of what I call cognitive speciation. This is not the only form of cognitive speciation, however. Cognitive speciation can be found throughout the biosphere. In so far as the biological individuality that characterizes the terrestrial biosphere entails individual organisms with individual brains and central nervous systems, and, when these become sufficiently complex individual minds and consciousness supervene upon these structures, to the extent that mind corresponds with these biological structures, the branching bush of species coincides with a branching bush of cognition.

Both our anthropocentric conception of cognition and our human exceptionalism have, in the past, militated against recognizing mind as it has appeared in other species, but there has been a sea change in this area and it is no longer considered unspeakable, much less eccentric, to attribute mind and consciousness to other species. In so far as non-human species have minds, they engage in cognition, and this implies that these other species have concepts that they employ to organize their cognition.

Needless to say, human cognition is much more advanced and abstract than that of other species in the terrestrial biosphere, especially in regard to the human ability to use grammatically structured languages to structure their thoughts and formulate their conceptual frameworks. Language is a networking tool for minds, and by networking their minds through the use of language human beings have exponentially augmented their cognitive abilities.

Even if the concepts employed by other species are impoverished in comparison to the human conceptual framework, non-human conceptual frameworks are the ultimate source and origin of later human cognition. Once we accept this, we can see that different minds would have different conceptual frameworks populated by different sets of concepts. We would expect that the set of concepts employed by human beings is absolutely larger than the set of concepts employed by other species, but we would also expect that these sets of concepts overlap and intersect with the sets of concepts employed by other species.

For example, there are parts of the dolphin brain that are associated with areas of the human brain that are responsible for emotions. In the dolphin brain some of these areas have grown that have not grown in human brains, so that it is likely that dolphins experience at least some emotions that human beings do not experience. In this sense, their cognition is richer than ours in at least one way, which points to a conceptual framework populated by emotional concepts we do not possess.

This argument would probably encounter less resistance if it were confined to more-or-less immediate human ancestors and near relatives in the human tree. I doubt many would strongly object that Neanderthals had some form of cognition, and that it differed to some degree from that of homo sapiens. The same proximity would be operable if we consider human descendants that would differ from us if we were to speciate rather than to go extinct. It would be expected that some future transhumans or post-humans would possess a conceptual framework that overlapped with the human conceptual framework but which did not perfectly coincide.

With further changes to the human brain and CNS, we could experience further changes in cognition. What could these changes be? A good review of neurophysiology is Evolution of the neocortex: a perspective from developmental biology by Pasko Rakic. There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to neuroscience papers, but I will also mention the article Researchers find DNA mutation that led to change in function of gene in humans that sparked larger neocortex by Bob Yirka, which led me to the paper Human-specific gene ARHGAP11B promotes basal progenitor amplification and neocortex expansion by Marta Florio, et al., which discusses neural proliferation in primates.

Suppose some mutation in ARHGAP11B or some related gene led to further neural proliferation and neocortex expansion. It is because the neurons that are responsible for our higher executive functions are in the outer layer of the neocortex that the deep convolutions of the neocortex give more surface area of the brain, hence more neocortex, within the confined space of the human skull. If some mutation allowed for a thicker and larger neocortex, or greater cortical density, or both, the brain that resulted might considerably out-perform the human brain as we know it today.

Given what we know about the inherited structures of the brain and the deep history of mind in the biosphere, we can say with some confidence that any human beings that were to inherit such a mutation, or post-human beings as the case may be, however great their executive functions in comparison to ours, would still be human, all-too-human in the sense that they would still have the drives of the reptilian hindbrain and the emotions of the limbic system. They would not be Apollonian and god-like beings, pure spirits possessing a higher form of consciousness; they would be recognizable human beings, or mostly recognizable human beings.

We could, however, formulate scenarios in which the recognition would not be so obvious or immediate. It would be possible, though not likely, that a future mutation could both expand the neocortex while shrinking or disabling the limbic system, which would result in the kind of mind of science fiction nightmares: a highly-intelligent, relentlessly rational, unemotional mind—“intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic.” There is only so much room inside our skulls, the argument could run, so that more neocortex eventually would mean less hindbrain and less limbic system. Here the cognitive speciation would be more apparent, and the conceptual frameworks of human beings and post-humans would overlap less and contrast more. However, there would still be many concepts in common, if not most concepts in common.

I have here described a naturalistic evolutionary scenario in which human beings could be cognitively surpassed and our descendants would experience cognitive descent with modification, that is to say, cognitive speciation. In my previous post I mentioned the possibility of technological interventions that could result in a new Archetypal Age. The evolutionary scenario I have described could also result in a new Archetypal Age, if the cognition of our descendants involved novel or modified archetypal material, to which they would respond as we respond to the archetypal material within our subconscious. There would no doubt be significant overlap between human and post-human archetypal material, but the two may not coincide, and could diverge over time. 

The above image is from the paper “Cortical evolution in mammals: The bane and beauty of phenotypic variability” by Leah A. Krubitzer and Adele M. H. Seelke