Evolution of The Brain and Intelligence

Evolution of The Brain and Intelligence PDF Author: Harry Jerison
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0323141080
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence covers the general principles of behavior and brain function. The book is divided into four parts encompassing 17 chapters that emphasize the implications of the history of the brain for the evolution of behavior in vertebrates. The introductory chapter covers the studies of animal behavior and their implications about the nature of the animal's world. The following chapters emphasize methodological issues and the meanings of brain indices and brain size, as well as the general anatomy of the brain. Other chapters discuss the history of the brain in the major vertebrate groups that were known about 300 million years ago to determine the fate of these early vertebrate groups. Discussions on broad trends in evolution and their implications for the evolution of intelligence are also included. Substantive matter on the brains, bodies, and associated mechanisms of behavior of vertebrates are covered in the remaining chapters of the book, with an emphasis on evolution "above the species level. This book is of value to anthropologists, behavioral scientists, zoologists, paleontologists, and neurosciences students.

Evolution of The Brain and Intelligence

Evolution of The Brain and Intelligence PDF Author: Harry Jerison
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0323141080
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence covers the general principles of behavior and brain function. The book is divided into four parts encompassing 17 chapters that emphasize the implications of the history of the brain for the evolution of behavior in vertebrates. The introductory chapter covers the studies of animal behavior and their implications about the nature of the animal's world. The following chapters emphasize methodological issues and the meanings of brain indices and brain size, as well as the general anatomy of the brain. Other chapters discuss the history of the brain in the major vertebrate groups that were known about 300 million years ago to determine the fate of these early vertebrate groups. Discussions on broad trends in evolution and their implications for the evolution of intelligence are also included. Substantive matter on the brains, bodies, and associated mechanisms of behavior of vertebrates are covered in the remaining chapters of the book, with an emphasis on evolution "above the species level. This book is of value to anthropologists, behavioral scientists, zoologists, paleontologists, and neurosciences students.

The Origin of Mind

The Origin of Mind PDF Author: David C. Geary
Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn
ISBN: 9781591471813
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
"Geary also explores a number of issues that are of interest in modern society, including how general intelligence relates to academic achievement, occupational status, and income."--BOOK JACKET.

Evolution of the Primate Brain

Evolution of the Primate Brain PDF Author: Michel A. Hofman
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444538607
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
This volume of Progress in Brain Research provides a synthetic source of information about state-of-the-art research that has important implications for the evolution of the brain and cognition in primates, including humans. This topic requires input from a variety of fields that are developing at an unprecedented pace: genetics, developmental neurobiology, comparative and functional neuroanatomy (at gross and microanatomical levels), quantitative neurobiology related to scaling factors that constrain brain organization and evolution, primate palaeontology (including paleoneurology), paleo-anthropology, comparative psychology, and behavioural evolutionary biology. Written by internationally-renowned scientists, this timely volume will be of wide interest to students, scholars, science journalists, and a variety of experts who are interested in keeping track of the discoveries that are rapidly emerging about the evolution of the brain and cognition. Written by internationally renowned scientists, this timely volume will be of wide interest to students, scholars, science journalists, and a variety of experts who are interested in keeping track of the discoveries that are rapidly emerging about the evolution of the brain and cognition

The Long Evolution of Brains and Minds

The Long Evolution of Brains and Minds PDF Author: Gerhard Roth
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400762593
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The main topic of the book is a reconstruction of the evolution of nervous systems and brains as well as of mental-cognitive abilities, in short “intelligence” from simplest organisms to humans. It investigates to which extent the two are correlated. One central topic is the alleged uniqueness of the human brain and human intelligence and mind. It is discussed which neural features make certain animals and humans intelligent and creative: Is it absolute or relative brain size or the size of “intelligence centers” inside the brains, the number of nerve cells inside the brain in total or in such “intelligence centers” decisive for the degree of intelligence, of mind and eventually consciousness? And which are the driving forces behind these processes? Finally, it is asked what all this means for the classical problem of mind-brain relationship and for a naturalistic theory of mind.

Origins of Intelligence

Origins of Intelligence PDF Author: Sue Taylor Parker
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 1421410419
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 613

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Book Description
A look at the origins of cognitive abilities in primate species. Since Darwin’s time, comparative psychologists have searched for a good way to compare cognition in humans and nonhuman primates. In Origins of Intelligence, Sue Parker and Michael McKinney offer such a framework and make a strong case for using human development theory (both Piagetian and neo-Piagetian) to study the evolution of intelligence across primate species. Their approach is comprehensive, covering a broad range of social, symbolic, physical, and logical domains, which fall under the all-encompassing and much-debated term intelligence. A widely held theory among developmental psychologists and social and biological anthropologists is that cognitive evolution in humans has occurred through juvenilization—the gradual accentuation and lengthening of childhood in the evolutionary process. In this work, however, Parker and McKinney argue instead that new stages were added at the end of cognitive development in our hominid ancestors, coining the term adultification by terminal extension to explain this process. Drawing evidence from scores of studies on monkeys, great apes, and human children, this book provides unique insights into ontogenetic constraints that have interacted with selective forces to shape the evolution of cognitive development in our lineage. “The authors’ elegant theory and comprehensive empirical synthesis of how the development of human intelligence and brain evolved opens up cascading heuristic avenues for creatively answering one of the great questions in the human history of ideas.” —Jonas Langer, Human Development “A handy source of information on comparative cognitive abilities related to life history and brain variables.” —James Anderson, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Origins of Mind

Origins of Mind PDF Author: Liz Swan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400754191
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The big question of how and why mindedness evolved necessitates collaborative, multidisciplinary investigation. Biosemiotics provides a new conceptual space that attracts a multitude of thinkers in the biological and cognitive sciences and the humanities who recognize continuity in the biosphere from the simplest to the most complex organisms, and who are united in the project of trying to account for even language and human consciousness in this comprehensive picture of life. The young interdiscipline of biosemiotics has so far by and large focused on codes, signs and sign processes in the microworld—a fact that reflects the field’s strong representation in microbiology and embryology. What philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists can contribute to the growing interdiscipline are insights into how the biosemiotic weltanschauung applies to complex organisms like humans where such signs and sign processes constitute human society and culture.

A Thousand Brains

A Thousand Brains PDF Author: Jeff Hawkins
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541675800
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
A bestselling author, neuroscientist, and computer engineer unveils a theory of intelligence that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI. For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world—not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought. A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word. One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2021 One of Bill Gates' Five Favorite Books of 2021

How Brains Think

How Brains Think PDF Author: William H. Calvin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465066895
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
If you're good at finding the one right answer to life's multiple-choice questions, you're "smart." But "intelligence" is what you need when contemplating the leftovers in the refrigerator, trying to figure out what might go with them; or if you're trying to speak a sentence that you've never spoken before. As Jean Piaget said, intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do, when all the standard answers are inadequate. This book tries to fathom how our inner life evolves from one topic to another, as we create and reject alternatives. Ever since Darwin, we've known that elegant things can emerge (indeed, self-organize) from "simpler" beginnings. And, says theoretical neurophysiologist William H. Calvin, the bootstrapping of new ideas works much like the immune response or the evolution of a new animal species -- except that the brain can turn the Darwinian crank a lot faster, on the time scale of thought and action. Drawing on anthropology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the neurosciences, Calvin also considers how a more intelligent brain developed using slow biological improvements over the last few million years. Long ago, evolving jack-of-all trades versatility was encouraged by abrupt climate changes. Now, evolving intelligence uses a nonbiological track: augmenting human intelligence and building intelligent machines.

Dragons of Eden

Dragons of Eden PDF Author: Carl Sagan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345346297
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
“A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday . . . It's a delight.”—The New York Times Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends—and their amazing links to recent discoveries. “How can I persuade every intelligent person to read this important and elegant book? . . . He talks about all kinds of things: the why of the pain of human childbirth . . . the reason for sleeping and dreaming . . . chimpanzees taught to communicate in deaf and dumb language . . . the definition of death . . . cloning . . . computers . . . intelligent life on other planets. . . . Fascinating . . . delightful.”—The Boston Globe “In some lost Eden where dragons ruled, the foundations of our intelligence were laid. . . . Carl Sagan takes us on a guided tour of that lost land. . . . Fascinating . . . entertaining . . . masterful.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language

Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language PDF Author: Maxim I. Stamenov
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027297088
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The emergence of language, social intelligence, and tool development are what made homo sapiens sapiens differentiate itself from all other biological species in the world. The use of language and the management of social and instrumental skills imply an awareness of intention and the consideration that one faces another individual with an attitude analogical to that of one’s own. The metaphor of ‘mirror’ aptly comes to mind.Recent investigations have shown that the human ability to ‘mirror’ other’s actions originates in the brain at a much deeper level than phenomenal awareness. A new class of neurons has been discovered in the premotor area of the monkey brain: ‘mirror neurons’. Quite remarkably, they are tuned to fire to the enaction as well as observation of specific classes of behavior: fine manual actions and actions performed by mouth. They become activated independent of the agent, be it the self or a third person whose action is observed. The activation in mirror neurons is automatic and binds the observation and enaction of some behavior by the self or by the observed other. The peculiar first-to-third-person ‘intersubjectivity’ of the performance of mirror neurons and their surprising complementarity to the functioning of strategic communicative face-to-face (first-to-second person) interaction may shed new light on the functional architecture of conscious vs. unconscious mental processes and the relationship between behavioral and communicative action in monkeys, primates, and humans. The present volume discusses the nature of mirror neurons as presented by the research team of Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti (University of Parma), who originally discovered them, and the implications to our understanding of the evolution of brain, mind and communicative interaction in non-human primates and man.(Series B)