Understanding cognitive domains through the study of individual variation in cognitive strategies – INDCOG

Are there individuals that are smarter than others in the same species? Is there a modular system based on cognitive subunits adapted to solve specific problems, or cognitive abilities evolved more generally and the same mechanisms allow solving multiple problems? The study of inter-individual variation is essential to understand the general or modular nature of cognition, but for a long time research focused on average performance and treated individual differences as uninformative variability. Like humans, most animals differ individually in how they perceive, learn, memorize and understand the world (i.e. cognitive styles). INDCOG aims at characterising and understanding the link between cognitive styles and animal personality - defined as consistent inter-individual variation in behavioural expression - using a comprehensive and inter-disciplinary approach addressing at the same time: a) neural and physiological mechanisms, b) ontogeny, c) adaptive significance, d) evolutionary history. As model organisms, we selected several species of ants, in which all these questions can be addressed simultaneously. Indeed, they present a rich repertoire of cognitive skills, from associative learning to higher-order cognitive abilities, including tool use and numerosity, while facilitating experimental manipulation and allowing to obtain high sample sizes. The project is based on an original combination of high throughput behavioral analyses, state-of-the-art neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, and evolutionary genetics. It will be the first project to investigate the emergence of cognitive styles on such a large scale, digging into both their proximate and ultimate causes. INDCOG aims for a breakthrough by changing our reductive vision of individual variability in cognitive performances.