EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT 

 OF SELF-REGULATION 



I was very pleased to receive the invitation to deliver the 77 lh 

 James Arthur Lecture on the Evolution of the Human Brain. Al- 

 though the work done in our laboratory has more to do with de- 

 velopment (Posner and Rothbart, 2007) than with evolution, Geary 

 (2005) has provided a strong perspective on how mental processes, 

 including control mechanisms, arise in evolution, and I am very glad 

 to be able to place our studies of self-regulation within this more 

 general evolutionary context. Fortunately for this effort, all parents 

 are well aware of the remarkable transformation from infancy to 

 childhood as their children develop the ability to regulate emotions 

 and to persist with goals in the face of distractions. 



The achievements of this period are usually labeled "self-regu- 

 lation." Self-regulation is defined by one researcher as "the key 

 mediator between genetic predisposition, early experience and adult 

 functioning" (Fonagy and Target, 2002). Although self-regulation 

 has been seen as primarily an issue in child development, its genetic 

 basis suggests an important evolutionary history. In fact, a number 

 of genes have been identified as related to the brain network that 

 we believe underlies self-regulation (Posner et al., 2007). Our ap- 

 proach has been to understand the anatomy of self-regulation 

 through the use of neuroimaging and then to examine how genes 

 and experience develop this network within individuals. This allows 

 us to discuss evolutionary changes in the network that take place 

 specifically between nonhuman primates and humans, as well as 

 more recent changes that might reflect aspects of human evolution. 

 This lecture will concern both aspects of evolution. 



ANATOMY 



A frontal executive attention network (see fig. 1) that includes the 

 anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal cortex is active in different 

 tasks that involve attention when conflict is present and/or producing 

 a nonhabitual response is required (Botvinick et al., 2001). One 

 important study (Duncan et al., 2000) examined a wide range of 



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