title: Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes.
abstract: Snakes and their relationships with humans and other primates have attracted broad attention from multiple fields of study, but not, surprisingly, from neuroscience, despite the involvement of the visual system and strong behavioral and physiological evidence that humans and other primates can detect snakes faster than innocuous objects. Here, we report the existence of neurons in the primate medial and dorsolateral pulvinar that respond selectively to visual images of snakes. Compared with three other categories of stimuli (monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometrical shapes), snakes elicited the strongest, fastest responses, and the responses were not reduced by low spatial filtering. These findings integrate neuroscience with evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, herpetology, and primatology by identifying a neurobiological basis for primates' heightened visual sensitivity to snakes, and adding a crucial component to the growing evolutionary perspective that snakes have long shaped our primate lineage.
authors.affiliation: System Emotional Science, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama, Sugitani 2630, Toyama 930-0194, Japan.
authors.forename: Quan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Van Le
authors.forename: Lynne A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Isbell
authors.forename: Jumpei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Matsumoto
authors.forename: Minh
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.forename: Etsuro
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hori
authors.forename: Rafael S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Maior
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tomaz
authors.forename: Anh Hai
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.forename: Taketoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ono
authors.forename: Hisao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nishijo
mesh_terms: D000220:Adaptation, Biological / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D008251:Macaca / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology; D008954:Models, Biological; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D020649:Pulvinar / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012911:Snakes; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Snake Detection Theory; evolution; low-pass filtered images; visual responses