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

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

Get Book

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

Primate Brain Evolution

Primate Brain Evolution PDF Author: Este Armstrong
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468441485
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Given the past decade's explosion of neurobiological and paleontologi cal data and their increasingly sophisticated analyses, interdisciplinary syntheses between these two broad disciplines are of value and interest to many different scientists. The collected papers of this volume will appeal to students of primate and hominid evolution, neuroscientists, sociobiolo gists, and other behaviorists who seek a better understanding of the substrates of primate, including human, behavior. Each species of living primates represents an endpoint in evolution, but comparative neurologists can produce approximate evolutionary se quences by careful analyses of representative series. Because nervous tissue does not fossilize, only a comparison of structures and functions among extant primates can be used to investigate the fine details of primate bra~n evolution. Paleoneurologists, who directly examine the fossil record via endocasts or cranial capacities of fossil skulls, can best provide information about gross details, such as changes in brain size or sulcal patterns, and determine when they occurred. Physical anthropologists and paleontologists have traditionally relied more on paleoneurology, whereas neuroscientists and psychologists have relied more on comparative neurology. This division has been a detriment to the advancement of these fields and to the conceptual bases of primate brain evolution. Both methods are important and a synthesis is desirable. To this end, two symposia were held in 1980--one at the meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthro pologists in Niagara Falls, U. S. A. , and one at the precongressional meeting of the International Primatological Society in Torino, Italy.

Evolutionary Anatomy of the Primate Cerebral Cortex

Evolutionary Anatomy of the Primate Cerebral Cortex PDF Author: Dean Falk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052164271X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Review of brain evolution in primates including humans.

Primate Brain Evolution

Primate Brain Evolution PDF Author: 3Island Press
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781468441499
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description


Evolution of Primate Social Cognition

Evolution of Primate Social Cognition PDF Author: Laura Desirèe Di Paolo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319937766
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary volume brings together expert researchers coming from primatology, anthropology, ethology, philosophy of cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, mathematics and psychology to discuss both the foundations of non-human primate and human social cognition as well as the means there currently exist to study the various facets of social cognition. The first part focusses on various aspects of social cognition across primates, from the relationship between food and social behaviour to the connection with empathy and communication, offering a multitude of innovative approaches that range from field-studies to philosophy. The second part details the various epistemic and methodological means there exist to study social cognition, in particular how to ascertain the proximal and ultimate mechanisms of social cognition through experimental, modelling and field studies. In the final part, the mechanisms of cultural transmission in primate and human societies are investigated, and special attention is given to how the evolution of cognitive capacities underlie primates’ abilities to use and manufacture tools, and how this in turn influences their social ecology. A must-read for both, young scholars as well as established researchers!

Primate Origins: Adaptations and Evolution

Primate Origins: Adaptations and Evolution PDF Author: Matthew J. Ravosa
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387335072
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 846

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Book Description
This book provides a novel focus on adaptive explanations for cranial and postcranial features and functional complexes, socioecological systems, life history patterns, etc. in early primates. It further offers a detailed rendering of the phylogenetic affinities of such basal taxa to later primate clades as well as to other early/recent mammalian orders. In addition to the strictly paleontological or systemic questions regarding Primate Origins, the editors concentrate on the adaptive significance of primate characteristics. Thus, the book provides the broadest possible perspective on early primate phylogeny and the adaptive uniqueness of the Order Primates.

The Primate Brain

The Primate Brain PDF Author: Charles Robert Noback
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Brain
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description


The Human Advantage

The Human Advantage PDF Author: Suzana Herculano-Houzel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262333201
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Why our human brains are awesome, and how we left our cousins, the great apes, behind: a tale of neurons and calories, and cooking. Humans are awesome. Our brains are gigantic, seven times larger than they should be for the size of our bodies. The human brain uses 25% of all the energy the body requires each day. And it became enormous in a very short amount of time in evolution, allowing us to leave our cousins, the great apes, behind. So the human brain is special, right? Wrong, according to Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Humans have developed cognitive abilities that outstrip those of all other animals, but not because we are evolutionary outliers. The human brain was not singled out to become amazing in its own exclusive way, and it never stopped being a primate brain. If we are not an exception to the rules of evolution, then what is the source of the human advantage? Herculano-Houzel shows that it is not the size of our brain that matters but the fact that we have more neurons in the cerebral cortex than any other animal, thanks to our ancestors' invention, some 1.5 million years ago, of a more efficient way to obtain calories: cooking. Because we are primates, ingesting more calories in less time made possible the rapid acquisition of a huge number of neurons in the still fairly small cerebral cortex—the part of the brain responsible for finding patterns, reasoning, developing technology, and passing it on through culture. Herculano-Houzel shows us how she came to these conclusions—making “brain soup” to determine the number of neurons in the brain, for example, and bringing animal brains in a suitcase through customs. The Human Advantage is an engaging and original look at how we became remarkable without ever being special.

The Primate Brain

The Primate Brain PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anatomy, Comparative
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description


Apes and Human Evolution

Apes and Human Evolution PDF Author: Russell H. Tuttle
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674073169
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1089

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Book Description
In this masterwork, Russell H. Tuttle synthesizes a vast research literature in primate evolution and behavior to explain how apes and humans evolved in relation to one another, and why humans became a bipedal, tool-making, culture-inventing species distinct from other hominoids. Along the way, he refutes the influential theory that men are essentially killer apes—sophisticated but instinctively aggressive and destructive beings. Situating humans in a broad context, Tuttle musters convincing evidence from morphology and recent fossil discoveries to reveal what early primates ate, where they slept, how they learned to walk upright, how brain and hand anatomy evolved simultaneously, and what else happened evolutionarily to cause humans to diverge from their closest relatives. Despite our genomic similarities with bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, humans are unique among primates in occupying a symbolic niche of values and beliefs based on symbolically mediated cognitive processes. Although apes exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest they can think, salient elements of human culture—speech, mating proscriptions, kinship structures, and moral codes—are symbolic systems that are not manifest in ape niches. This encyclopedic volume is both a milestone in primatological research and a critique of what is known and yet to be discovered about human and ape potential.