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Beyond the brain : how body and environment shape animal and human minds
\"When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations--that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment--not just their brains--to behave intelligently. Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain--or indeed having a brain at all--she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain's evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments. Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Five Breakthroughs: A First Approximation of Brain Evolution From Early Bilaterians to Humans
Retracing the evolutionary steps by which human brains evolved can offer insights into the underlying mechanisms of human brain function as well as the phylogenetic origin of various features of human behavior. To this end, this article presents a model for interpreting the physical and behavioral modifications throughout major milestones in human brain evolution. This model introduces the concept of a “breakthrough” as a useful tool for interpreting suites of brain modifications and the various adaptive behaviors these modifications enabled. This offers a unique view into the ordered steps by which human brains evolved and suggests several unique hypotheses on the mechanisms of human brain function.
Journal Article
Audiences
This timely volume engages with one of the most important shifts in recent film studies: the turn away from text-based analysis towards the viewer. Historically, this marks a return to early interest in the effect of film on the audience by psychoanalysts and psychologists, which was overtaken by concern with the ‘effects’ of film, linked to calls for censorship and moral panics rather than to understanding the mental and behavioral world of the spectator. Early cinema history has revealed the diversity of film-viewing habits, while traditional ‘box office’ studies, which treated the audience initially as a homogeneous market, have been replaced by the study of individual consumers and their motivations. Latterly, there has been a marked turn towards more sophisticated economic and sociological analysis of attendance data. And as the film experience fragments across multiple formats, the perceptual and cognitive experience of the individual viewer (who is also an auditor) has become increasingly accessible. With contributions from Gregory Waller, John Sedgwick and Martin Barker, this work spans the spectrum of contemporary audience studies, revealing work being done on local, non-theatrical and live digital transmission audiences, and on the relative attraction of large-scale, domestic and mobile platforms.
eBook
The symbolic species : the co-evolution of language and the human brain
Deacon presents a theory of the origins of man's unique language ability, claiming that language is not triggered by a language instinct, but is instead a reflection of our consciousness-thinking motors brain evolution.
Computational reconstruction of evolutionary selection in human brain networks
The accumulation of genomic and brain data opens new opportunities for resource friendly, data driven brain exploration. A key challenge is to develop versatile and accessible strategies that integrate and mine multimodal datasets for novel neuroscientific insights. Here, we optimized an integrated workflow for mapping multigenic evolutionary traits in the human brain across cognitive, cellular, and molecular levels.
At the input stage, the workflow fuses an evolutionary genetic dataset with searchable synthetic functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) databases that are pre clustered into concise psychological domains for improved interpretability. At its core, a Genetic Algorithm for Generalized Biclustering (GABi) mines gene sets under evolutionary selection that also show high expression correlation with fMRI networks.
Applying this workflow, we identified evolutionary patterns spanning cognitive traits, brain cell types, and molecular mechanisms. Focusing on socio affective traits, the algorithm highlighted peaks in adaptive selection in networks for social interaction (language) and social concepts (theory of mind) across hominid, early hominin, and anatomically modern human (AMH) ancestry. These traits emerge from a broad spectrum of excitatory (glutamatergic) and inhibitory (GABAergic) neuronal, as well as non neuronal, cell types. The associated Gene Ontology (GO) terms were enriched for cell signaling, synaptic organization, and neuronal morphology.
Together, these findings demonstrate an integrated workflow for molecular to systems level exploration of the brain and provide new perspectives on the evolutionary history of human socio affective functions. This approach can be adapted to screen for functional traits in the context of mental disorders or applied to the brains of other phylogenies in a similar manner.
Journal Article
The recursive mind
The Recursive Mindchallenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. \"I think, therefore I am,\" is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental \"time travel\"--the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness.
Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, anthropology, and archaeology, Corballis demonstrates how these recursive structures led to the emergence of language and speech, which ultimately enabled us to share our thoughts, plan with others, and reshape our environment to better reflect our creative imaginations. He shows how the recursive mind was critical to survival in the harsh conditions of the Pleistocene epoch, and how it evolved to foster social cohesion. He traces how language itself adapted to recursive thinking, first through manual gestures, then later, with the emergence ofHomo sapiens, vocally. Toolmaking and manufacture arose, and the application of recursive principles to these activities in turn led to the complexities of human civilization, the extinction of fellow large-brained hominins like the Neandertals, and our species' supremacy over the physical world.
Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
eBook
The Unpredictable Species
The Unpredictable Speciesargues that the human brain evolved in a way that enhances our cognitive flexibility and capacity for innovation and imitation. In doing so, the book challenges the central claim of evolutionary psychology that we are locked into predictable patterns of behavior that were fixed by genes, and refutes the claim that language is innate. Philip Lieberman builds his case with evidence from neuroscience, genetics, and physical anthropology, showing how our basal ganglia--structures deep within the brain whose origins predate the dinosaurs--came to play a key role in human creativity. He demonstrates how the transfer of information in these structures was enhanced by genetic mutation and evolution, giving rise to supercharged neural circuits linking activity in different parts of the brain. Human invention, expressed in different epochs and locales in the form of stone tools, digital computers, new art forms, complex civilizations--even the latest fashions--stems from these supercharged circuits.
The Unpredictable Speciesboldly upends scientifically controversial yet popular beliefs about how our brains actually work. Along the way, this compelling book provides insights into a host of topics related to human cognition, including associative learning, epigenetics, the skills required to be a samurai, and the causes of cognitive confusion on Mount Everest and of Parkinson's disease.
eBook