Primate Brain Evolution: Methods and Concepts

ISBN-13: 9781468441505 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 346 str.

Este Armstrong; Dean Falk

Opis

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."

Spis treści

Considerations of Homology and the Visual System.- Some Questions and Problems Related to Homology.- Reconstructing the Evolution of the Brain in Primates through the Use of Comparative Neurophysiological and Neuroanatomical Data.- Allometric Considerations.- Some Cautionary Notes on Making Inferences about Relative Brain Size.- Allometric Approaches to the Evolution of the Primate Nervous System.- The Relativity of Relative Brain Measures and Hominid Mosaic Evolution.- Allometry, Brain Size, Cortical Surface, and Convolutedness.- Ontogenetic Perspectives.- Encephalization and Obstetrics in Primates with Particular Reference to Human Evolution.- The Role of Brain Maturation in the Evolution of the Primates.- The Development of the Primate Pulvinar.- Approaches from Cytoarchitectonics.- Mosaic Evolution in the Primate Brain: Differences and Similarities in the Hominid Thalamus.- Brain Organization and Taxonomic Relationships in Insectivora and Primates.- Quantitative Cytoarchitectonics of the Cerebral Cortices of Several Prosimian Species.- Role of Architectonics and Connections in the Study of Primate Brain Evolution.- A Paleoneurological Perspective.- Mapping Fossil Endocasts.- Early Primate Brain Evolution.- A Study of Cerebral Vascular Evolution in Primates.- Asymmetries of the Brains and Skulls of Nonhuman Primates.- Theoretical Overviews.- Neurobiological Aspects in the Phylogenetic Acquisition of Speech.- On the Origin and Progressive Evolution of the Triune Brain.- List of Contributors.- Author Index.

O autorze

Dean Falk, geboren 1944, ist Professorin für Anthropologie und Neurowissenschaftlerin an der Florida State University. Sie ist Autorin mehrerer Bücher über die menschliche Evolution und die Entwicklung kognitiver Fähigkeiten bei Menschenaffen.