Evolution of the Brain, Cognition, and Emotion in Vertebrates
Evolution of the Brain, Cognition, and Emotion in Vertebrates

Author: Shigeru Watanabe

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 4431565590

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This book presents a new view on the evolution of the brain, cognition, and emotion. Around a half-century ago, Professor Harry Jerison published a seminal book entitled Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence. Since then, there has been a series of dramatic methodological and conceptual changes which have led to many new insights into the understanding of brain evolution and cognition. This book is particularly focused on three significant aspects of such changes. First, taking advantage of a new integrated approach called evolutionary developmental biology or Evo/Devo, researchers have started to look into vertebrate brain evolution from the developmental perspective. Second, comparative neuroanatomists have accumulated a large amount of information about the brains of diverse animal groups to refute the old-fashioned idea that vertebrate brains evolved linearly from non-mammals to mammals. Third, comparative behavioral studies have demonstrated that sophisticated cognition and emotion are not unique to some primates but are also found in many non-primate and even non-mammalian species. This work will appeal to a wide readership in such fields as neuroscience, cognitive science, and behavioral science.

The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest
The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest

Author: Christophe Boesch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-28

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 1108481558

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An engaging account of the research and key findings on Taï chimpanzees to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this project.

Field and Laboratory Methods in Animal Cognition
Field and Laboratory Methods in Animal Cognition

Author: Nereida Bueno-Guerra

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-08-09

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 110842032X

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Leading researchers present current methodological approaches and future directions for a less anthropocentric study of animal cognition.

Becoming Human
Becoming Human

Author: Michael Tomasello

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 2019-01-14

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0674980859

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Winner of the William James Book Award Winner of the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award “A landmark in our understanding of human development.” —Paul Harris, author of Trusting What You’re Told “Magisterial...Makes an impressive argument that most distinctly human traits are established early in childhood and that the general chronology in which these traits appear can...be identified.” —Wall Street Journal Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Becoming Human looks instead to development and reveals how those things that make us unique are constructed during the first seven years of a child’s life. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tomasello draws from three decades of experimental research with chimpanzees, bonobos, and children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that differentiate humans from their primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities, but the maturation of humans’ evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities into uniquely human cognition and sociality. “How does human psychological growth run in the first seven years, in particular how does it instill ‘culture’ in us? ...Most of all, how does the capacity for shared intentionality and self-regulation evolve in people? This is a very thoughtful and also important book.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “Theoretically daring and experimentally ingenious, Becoming Human squarely tackles the abiding question of what makes us human.” —Susan Gelman “Destined to become a classic. Anyone who is interested in cognitive science, child development, human evolution, or comparative psychology should read this book.” —Andrew Meltzoff

Bonobos
Bonobos

Author: Brian Hare

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-10-20

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0191044202

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The bonobo, along with the chimpanzee, is one of our two closest living relatives. Their relatively narrow geographic range (south of the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo) combined with the history of political instability in the region, has made their scientific study extremely difficult. In contrast, there are dozens of wild and captive sites where research has been conducted for decades with chimpanzees. Because data sets on bonobos have been so hard to obtain and so few large-scale studies have been published, the majority of researchers have treated chimpanzee data as being representative of both species. However, this misconception is now rapidly changing. With relative stability in the DRC for over a decade and a growing community of bonobos living in zoos and sanctuaries internationally, there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the bonobo with dozens of high impact publications focusing on this fascinating species. This research has revealed exactly how unique bonobos are in their brains and behavior, and reminds us why it is so important that we redouble our efforts to protect the few remaining wild populations of this iconic and highly endangered great ape species.

Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity
Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity

Author: Mark Burgin

Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 547

ISBN-13: 9789813108998

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Introduction: omnipresence of information as the incentive for transdisciplinarity / Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner -- Part I. Theory of information -- How to produce a transdisciplinary information concept for a universal theory of information / Søren Brier -- Inaccessible information and mathematical theory of oracles / Mark Burgin -- Emergence of symbolic information by the ritualisation transition / R. Feistel -- The law of "information conversion and intelligence creation" / Yixin Zhong -- Topoi of systems : on the onto-epistemic foundations of matter and information / Rainer E. Zimmermann -- Part II. Philosophy of information -- Transdisciplinarity seen through information, communication, computation, (inter-)action and cognition / Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Daniel Kade, Markus Wallmyr, Tobias Holstein and Alexander Almér -- A unified science-philosophy of information in the quest for transdisciplinarity / Wu Kun and Joseph E. Brenner -- Natural information and spiritual information as an outcome of the transdisciplinary methodology / Basarab Nicolescu -- A new perspective on the existence and non-existence / Wu Tianqi -- Part III. Applications of information -- Information and the evolution of human communication / Manuel Bohn -- Information processing and Fechner's problem as a choice of arithmetic / Marek Czachor and Centrum Leo Apostel -- A few questions related to information and symmetries in physics / György Darvas -- The "sociotype" approach to social structures and individual communication : an informational exploration of human sociality / R. del Moral, J. Navarro, and P.C. Marijuán -- Information outliers and their detection / A. Duraj and P.S. Szczepaniak -- A physicist's perspective on how one converts observation into information / Robert W. Johnson -- The concept of systemic-resonance bioinformatics. resonances and the quest for transdisciplinarity / Sergey V. Petoukhov and Elena S. Petukhova -- Information society and apartheid in the context of evolutionary economics : perspectives from information theory / Rodrick Wallace and Mindy Thompson Fullilove -- Artificial and natural genetic information processing / Guenther Witzany

The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture
The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture

Author: Lene Arnett Jensen

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 0199948550

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The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture provides a comprehensive synopsis of theory and research on human development, with every chapter drawing together findings from cultures around the world. This includes a focus on cultural diversity within nations, cultural change, and globalization. Expertly edited by Lene Arnett Jensen, the Handbook covers the entire lifespan from the prenatal period to old age. It delves deeply into topics such as the development of emotion, language, cognition, morality, creativity, and religion, as well as developmental contexts such as family, friends, civic institutions, school, media, and work. Written by an international group of eminent and cutting-edge experts, chapters showcase the burgeoning interdisciplinary approach to scholarship that bridges universal and cultural perspectives on human development. This "cultural-developmental approach" is a multifaceted, flexible, and dynamic way to conceptualize theory and research that is in step with the cultural and global realities of human development in the 21st century.

The Nature of Culture
The Nature of Culture

Author: Miriam N. Haidle

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 9401774269

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This volume introduces a model of the expansion of cultural capacity as a systemic approach with biological, historical and individual dimensions. It is contrasted with existing approaches from primatology and behavioural ecology; influential factors like differences in life history and demography are discussed; and the different stages of the development of cultural capacity in human evolution are traced in the archaeological record. The volume provides a synthetic view on a) the different factors and mechanisms of cultural development, and b) expansions of cultural capacities in human evolution beyond the capacities observed in animal culture so far. It is an important topic because only a volume of contributions from different disciplines can yield the necessary breadth to discuss the complex subject. The model introduced and discussed originates in the naturalist context and tries to open the discussion to some culturalist aspects, thus the publication in a series with archaeological and biological emphasis is apt. As a new development the synthetic model of expansion of cultural capacity is introduced and discussed in a broad perspective. ​

Bonobo Cognition and Behaviour
Bonobo Cognition and Behaviour

Author: Brian Hare

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-11-30

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 9004304177

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This volume includes twelve novel empirical papers focusing on the behaviour and cognition of both captive and wild bonobos (Pan paniscus). Overall it demonstrates how anyone interested in understanding humans or chimpanzees must also know bonobos.