ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025
What could evolve in the evolution of memory?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modality-specific long-term memory enhancement inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Selection shapes diverse animal minds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evolution of diverse (and advanced) cognitive abilities through adaptive fine-tuning of learning and chunking mechanisms.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Linking individual fitness to the evolution of cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Over the past five decades, advances in neuroscience have set out the adaptive landscape of memory, illuminating semi-independent storage mechanisms, forgetting mechanisms and modifications to basic machinery that bring context specificity. Yet because much of neuroscience aims to understand how the human brain functions, rather than to explore taxonomic diversity, the implications for animal cognitive evolution remain underexplored. This perspective article examines the potential evolutionary diversity of animal memory from a mechanistic viewpoint. We argue that taking into account neurogenetic and neurophysiological mechanisms of memory could illuminate how the diversity of cognitive traits has been shaped by natural selection. By focussing on memory in insects, notably through the lens of associative processes, we target our discussion on potential variation in taxonomically general processes within one of the animal kingdom's richest and most diverse animal groups. This exploration aims to broaden the discourse on memory evolution within the field of cognitive ecology towards an understanding of the many ways in which memory could be shaped by natural selection.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Selection shapes diverse animal minds'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.